


Love, Thieves, Fear

by eleonine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Supernatural Elements, psychic!john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-07
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 14:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleonine/pseuds/eleonine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being shot in Afghanistan, John’s heart stops in surgery. When he comes home, he discovers he can see ghosts. This is just one more thing to survive — or not — until he meets an eccentric stranger claiming to have the same ability, and is thrown headlong into a world of deception and murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/11848.html?thread=57690184#t57690184) at the kink meme.

_“Love, thieves, and fear make ghosts.” — German Proverb_

**xx xx**

John’s heart stops in surgery. He considers this a bit of trivia, at first; something to tell his grandkids when he’s shrunken into old age and knitwear. After all, he remembers getting shot — even if his memory has pulled its vanishing act on the pain, he can still see the ruin of his shoulder under his fingers, and feel his blood gluing his uniform to his skin — but the entire time between the anesthesia and the recovery bed is lost to him, no scarier than what put him under the knife in the first place. Later, he’ll wonder.

In hospital, all he wonders about is when he’ll be getting back to the field. He can’t lose it all to this shoulder thing, he thinks. When he shaves each morning, he can’t help notice the lines bent into his forehead, the patch of gray hair that’s sneaked up on him; if ever there was a time to get out of the army, this would be it, before it’s too late to start again. He’s not a career man. He’s a fighter.

But he can’t imagine it. He can’t imagine the war going on without him. The thought of going home, of being whoever John Watson is back in London, is so impossible he literally can’t conceive it.

Of course, he doesn’t have to.

**xx xx**

Harry rings him up and convinces him he needs new clothes for civilian life. He abandoned a box of jeans and oddments in her basement sometime close to the millennium, but those are, she says, sufficiently out of date to be considered retro, and anyway, he can hardly start a new life smelling of mothballs and cardboard. She wants to take him shopping. Unfortunately, she still has enough currency with him to guilt him into accepting the favor. He insists she show up sober, however, on pain of losing his cooperation.

She leaves him to finger through the racks while she shops elsewhere. It’s a big department store, brightly lit and buzzing with sharply dressed sales attendants. John leans heavily on his cane. He wills the people around him not to notice his shaking hand; to leave him alone.

He pulls a jacket out to get a better look. When he puts it back, there’s a man looming over him — twenty stone at least, covered in tattoos, with a knife handle sticking out of the belt of his trousers.

Oh, god, John thinks, or prays. Let him try something. He puts a bit less weight on the cane his new therapist tells him he doesn’t need.

“You’re one of them that can see us?” the man asks.

“Excuse me?” John says. His hand stills. He doesn’t notice.

The man looks much happier than John wants him to. “I heard one of you lot were in town. Oh, hey, I’m Rhys.” He holds out a hand, then looks down at it and pulls it back with a flustered gesture.

“Okay. Um. I’m sorry. Do you need something, or . . .?”

Rhys straightens up. He resembles a skyscraper looming between the earth and sun. “Oh, yeah. Right. D’you think you could talk to my girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend, I s’pose. Till death do us part, and all.”

“You want me to talk to your dead girlfriend?”

Rhys gives him a vaguely condescending look. “If she was dead, I wouldn’t need you, would I?” Then he rattles off a name and address, and says, “I need you to tell her I didn’t do it.”

John doubts that, somehow. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, and then there’s a hand on his shoulder. He whirls around. It’s only Harry.

“John?” she says quietly. “Who are you talking to?”

John glances over his shoulder, and his eyes stick there. Rhys is gone. Fuck, John thinks. “Myself,” he finds himself saying. What good did Afghanistan do him, if he can’t think on his feet? “I was just — thinking out loud.”

“Like hell,” says Harry. She gives him a look he’s more comfortable giving her. The one that means “you need serious professional help.”

John feels his hand trembling again, and he shoves it into his jacket pocket. “It’s an Afghanistan thing. All right?”

“You can talk to me about it.”

“I’d rather not.” He glances back again, looking for any trace of Rhys. “Look. I know what I want. Can we just — leave?”

“You don’t get to rant at me about my problems if you don’t let me care about yours.”

“Care all you want,” John says. He grinds in a breath when he hears the harsh note that slipped into his voice. “Please.” He pulls a jacket off the rack and holds up a pair of shirts. “Just buy this. Or don’t. Just let’s go.”

Harry’s jaw clenches, but after a moment, she nods. Maybe she’s thinking they’ve reached an impasse — for once, he’s as fucked up as her, and if she lets this go now he’ll return the favor later. Awkwardness hangs in the air like humidity.

When John gets home, Rhys is waiting.

He’s leaning placidly against the wall, resting a hand the width of a football on the frame of John’s bed. A rush of adrenaline pulls through John’s body as he drops his shopping bag. He shuts the door quietly behind himself — which, if he were paying attention, would tell him his thoughts are not traveling narrowly along the lines of self-defense. The knife is still visible at Rhys’s waist, although Rhys shows no inclination to reach for it. He’s not even particularly tense. “Who are you?” John asks.

“It’s Rhys,” Rhys says. “We talked at the shop?”

“How did you get in here?” John edges towards the drawer where he keeps his service weapon. He’ll have to explain why he has it, when Rhys is dead, but no one will fault him for firing it.

“I’m dead. Easier that they used to be, break-ins.”

John freezes. “What?”

“I’m dead,” Rhys repeats, then, when it’s clear John doesn’t understand, opens and closes his mouth mutely for a few seconds. He lifts his hand from the bed frame. John stiffens. It’s a long, tense second before Rhys says, “You don’t know who I am?”

“Obviously,” John manages to say, and the gun is just a few steps away; he could reach it before Rhys could get anywhere near him with that knife, but what if, what if — 

Rhys runs a hand over close-cropped hair. “Oh.” He swallows. “I should prob’ly — go, then.” And he disappears.

He bloody disappears.

Leaving John with his heart pounding, teetering on the edge of — nothing good. He pulls his gun from his desk and tucks it into his jacket, next to Harry’s old mobile ( _Harry Watson from Clara xxx_ , another reason he shouldn’t have let her buy him those clothes). He pulls the door open gently, and scans the hallway in both directions before edging out, ignoring the cane in his hand.

He searches every cranny of the building he can get access to, but Rhys is gone. Possibly he was never there at all.

John decides not to tell his therapist about this.

**xx**

The next evening, he takes what’s meant to be a calming walk. When he gets home, he finds a frail old woman in a wheelchair waiting for him in what he half-sarcastically calls his kitchen. Compared to Rhys, she shouldn’t be an imposing figure, but he’s seen less intimidating people than her blow up people more dangerous than him. This time he doesn’t close the door. “Ma’am,” he tries, hoping for the best. “Are you lost?”

“Are you the medium?” the woman asks.

“Um.” He glances back out into the corridor to make sure there’s no one to witness this, whatever this is. “No.”

The woman gives him a weary look. “Oh, dear. I heard you were new. And just back from the war, too. I can see how Rhys gave you a bit of a fright, love, but I’m trying to handle this correctly.” She crosses her tiny, blue-veined hands across the lap of her hospital gown. “My name is Beulah Hughes. I’ve been dead for fifty years. You’re a medium. I need you to talk to my great-great-grandchildren for me.”

“You’re a ghost.”

“Yes.”

“There’s no such thing.”

Beulah holds out her hand. It shakes unsupported. “Take my hand if you don’t believe me.”

John eyes her. “Why?”

She sighs. “I haven’t got all day.”

For a moment, he hesitates. Then, slowly, watching her every movement — she doesn’t make any — he reaches out, and brushes the pads of his fingers against her knuckles. Or tries to. All he meets is air. He grabs at her more vigorously. His hands find nothing to close around. “Oh, god,” he says, and falls back a step.

“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Beulah says, oblivious to his horror. “If I could tell you about —”

John is already halfway out the door, moving faster than a real limp would allow. He looks back at Beulah, her arms crossed, looking put out. His eyes find front, and there she is. “You have a duty,” she says. “You need to hold yourself to a certain standard.” Then she disappears.

John takes the single step necessary, then sinks to the floor where she just sat. He pulls his good leg up to his chest, and stretches the bad one out into the hall.

He rests his forehead on one knee, and closes his eyes, exhausted despite the rush of blood in his ears. He knows the symptoms of PTSD. He learned them in medical school, and his therapist has listed them often enough. This, whatever it is, was not on the list when last he checked.

Anyone he tells about this will want to medicate him into oblivion. John leans into the wall and watches one of the lights embedded in the ceiling flicker. Maybe that’s what he needs. He considers that for a while before deciding that regardless of that, it’s not what he wants.

Then he goes to bed.

**xx**

The next month is a misery. Every other person who speaks to him turns out to be dead. Is the pretty girl in the waiting room at therapy making small talk, or does she want him to tell her grieving wife it’s time to move on? Is the man lurking in the alley near John’s flat a threat? Is he homeless? Or is he deceased?

Beulah comes back, and Rhys, and a legion of others he does his best not to learn by name. They wait for him at home, harass him during his sessions with Ella, and make it impossible for him to have a normal conversation without looking completely barking. Harry at least is good enough to stay quiet about it on the increasingly rare occasions they see each other, now that she knows he’ll just bring up the divorce or the drinking if she tries to talk.

His nightmares get worse. He snaps at chippy cashiers who don’t deserve it. And there’s his damn leg.

And on top of all this, he discovers that ghosts can e-mail. And text — so frequently he has to turn off his ringer. It’s irritating, but when he gets Harry to read aloud the mangled victim of a smartphone’s autocorrect feature ( _hush nude wife chiseling hustle. Need 2 shove him_ ), he finally, after days of nagging doubt, knows he’s not gone mad.

With that knowledge, John supposes he can get on with his life. If he can learn to fit into the civilian world, he can learn to fit into the otherworld.

He keeps going to therapy, even though Ella is starting to talk anti-psychotics. It’s something to do. And he needs it, he knows he does; half the time he wants either to kill someone or kill himself. Mostly it’s enough that time is passing, but. He keeps going to therapy.

The cold settles into the city. John’s shoulder aches most of his waking day. It tells him something that his leg hurts no more than it usually does, but no matter how he tries, he can’t force the pain away. He keeps walking daily, trying to remember how to survive an English winter instead of an Afghan summer.

The ghosts begin to leave him alone when they realize he won’t help them. Maybe he feels guilty, ignoring them like that, but what can he do? He’s not exactly got credibility on his side, traumatized veteran that he is, even if he were to try to help.

Then one day, on his walk home, something happens.

“John Watson,” a man’s voice calls behind him, from the vicinity of a park bench. When he turns, just to be sure it’s not a living person he’s ignoring, it’s a stranger. The bad kind of stranger — tall, wearing designer clothing no one in John’s social circle could afford a stitch of, and John knows a fighter when he sees one.

“Yes?” he says. He shifts his grip on his cane subtly, shifts until it’s a weapon in his hand instead of a crutch. The world steadies out. “Who are you?”

“I have a job offer.”

John takes another look at the clothes and the two hundred pound haircut. The number of jobs someone like that could offer someone like him are limited. His only two qualifications are his talent for violence and his skill at sewing people back up afterwards, and both his war medals and his medical license are heaped together under his bed. “No, thank you,” he says, and begins walking in the opposite direction.

“I know what you are,” the man says.

John stops without turning round. “What’s that?”

“Well, now. That depends on who’s telling the story. The dead do love to gossip.” When he has John’s eyes again, the stranger smiles and goes on. “You’re like me.”

John’s lips narrow. “You see them too.”

The man is on his feet so suddenly he seems to have skipped the intervening movements. “Yes,” he says with a great deal of fervor. “They’re incredible idiots, but on occasion their killers aren’t. Which is where you come in.”

John would cross his arms if it weren’t for the cane. He settles for lifting his chin and looking down at the stranger as much as a short man might a tall one. “Your job offer,” he says. “Look. If it involves — them — I’m not interested. I have better things to do than listen to dead blokes whinging all day.”

“Oh, like what?” The man looks down at John infinitely more efficiently. “Visit your therapist? Work on your blog? I’m asking you to solve murders.”

John feels he should be concerned about how much this man knows about him, but compared with knowing he sees ghosts, it’s trivial. “Why can’t you solve them yourself?”

“I _will_ be solving them. I need you to provide the front.”

John is glad the park is mostly empty this time of day, because this is a conversation he doesn’t want overheard. “I see,” he says. “And why me, then? If you have information, you can give it anonymously. And if you need a face, why does it have to be someone who can see ghosts? It looks from my end like anyone would do.”

The man scoffs. “Hardly. Someone else might question my methods.”

“Ah.” It occurs to John that this man — whoever he is, however he knows about John’s particular circumstances — might be looking to cover up crimes rather than solve them. Unfortunately the thought makes a good deal more sense than the story currently on the table. He turns to go. “Right. Well. I hope you find someone else.”

“I’ll pay you a substantial sum of money,” the man says. John doesn’t break stride. “It’ll be dangerous.”

And damn him, John stops. He doesn’t think about stopping. He doesn’t even realize he’s done it until he starts talking. “What do you mean?” He only knows he’s turned back around when the stranger’s smile pierces his vision. It’s not a nice smile, but the feeling John meets it with is the best he’s felt in a while.

“London’s criminal underbelly doesn’t take kindly to people interfering with its operations,” the man says. “And I’m sure I’ll need you to make the occasional . . . excursion.”

And just like that, he’s got John, as long as the promise of danger holds. He’s taken his fair share of ridiculous offers — “Hey, d’you like bullet wounds and sand? Feel like invading Afghanistan?” being the primary example — but none based on quite so little information. “At least tell me your name,” he says after a long pause.

The stranger smirks. He holds out a hand. “Give me your mobile.”

“Excuse me?” John says, but he’s already fishing in his pocket. He hands it over, and the man fiddles with it for a few minutes before giving it back.

“Michael,” he says. “Michael Smith.”

“You needed Google to tell you your name?”

“I needed to update your contact information. I can generate an alias by myself.” The man John is reasonably certain is not named Michael adjusts his cuff. “The cash I send you every month will under no circumstances be deposited in any bank. You are not to tell anyone you’ve met me, or mention me to anyone. Ever. Are we clear?”

John drops his phone back into his pocket. “I guess so.”

“Excellent. I’ll text you when I need you.” This time it’s Michael who turns on his heel and leaves. 

John realizes he should want to sit down after standing this long, and he folds onto the bench. With one hand, he massages his thigh. The other he lets rest on the slats of the bench, useless as the leg. The part of him that will show up for therapy tomorrow thinks that, whatever he just did, he probably shouldn’t have. A smaller piece thinks he’s missing something. The bulk of him doesn’t care.

**xx**

That evening, he finds a large manila envelope sitting on his laptop keyboard. When he fingers it open and peeks inside, it’s stuffed full of cash. He falls heavily into the desk chair, ignoring the protest from his leg and shoulder, and for a long time, he just stares. It’s more money than he’s ever seen at once.

After a few minutes, he pours it out and starts counting. Ten thousand pounds, it comes out to, all in fifties.

Michael said he’ll be paid monthly, which means, when the math is done, John’s not walking away from this rich, but. Richer.

Fuck.

That’s assuming the envelopes keep coming, of course, which is by no means a sure thing. John runs his thumb over the queen’s face. He feels queasy.

It seems illicit, accepting this. He doesn’t know who “Michael Smith” is, or where his money comes from. Here, in this tiny flat John can — could — barely afford, the envelope and its spilled contents take up far too much room.

He shoves it all under his mattress. He’ll play it by ear, he thinks. He’s not done anything illegal yet. He pauses over that thought, and strikes it. He’s not done anything unethical yet. Illegal doesn’t bother him.

**xx**

The first text comes a week later. _Come to the park, same place, at earliest possible convenience. MS._ John only checks it when he remembers who he’s been waiting for. He stares at the phone in ambivalence for several seconds and contemplates his recent fantasies about knifing annoying shopkeepers. If he doesn’t scratch that itch at the back of his brain before too long, he’s worried he’ll act on them. So he grabs his coat and his gun.

Michael is waiting on the same bench. He’s wearing another expensive black suit — although there’s no appreciable difference to the last one — and the same long black coat and woolen scarf. Without being invited, John takes the seat next to him. “You rang?”

“How long did you wait before coming? Five minutes? Three?” Michael picks lint off his trousers.

Less than that, John thinks, but says nothing. “You have a case?”

Michael looks up at him. “Yes. Ethan Allard, killed a year ago via a gunshot to the back. The police have declared the case cold.”

“And we’re going to solve it.”

Michael smiles. “Oh, yes.”

“He doesn’t know who killed him?” That would be the obvious place to start, John thinks.

“Don’t be stupid.” Michael tilts his head away from John. “Ethan!” he calls. Obligingly, a forty-something fat man in a cheap business suit appears out of thin air. John tries to be startled. He fails.

“Did you figure it out?” Ethan asks. “Have you got him?”

“Not yet,” Michael says. “This is John Watson. I trust you’ve heard of him.”

Ethan’s eyes narrow. “He’s the unhelpful one.”

“Hullo,” John says.

“What’s he doing here?”

Michael stands up, and, haltingly, John follows. “Helping. Now, Ethan, if you could show us yourself . . .?”

“Again?” Ethan says. A shade of petulance creeps into the word. Michael peers at him. “Yes, yes, all right.”

Ethan’s shirt unbuttons to his navel, and his trousers fall to his ankles. A gaping hole opens on one side of his chest, and blood soaks through his undershirt like fear through a man’s gut. John stares.

“Thoughts, Dr. Watson?” Michael asks.

“You were shot,” John says. The doctor in him marvels that Ethan is still standing, apparently untroubled by the massive hole in his chest. Proper procedure for a case like this queues up in John’s muscles and in his mind. The soldier in him marvels at the caliber of bullet necessary to create a wound like that, and begins searching the area for the shooter. The medium in him thinks, well, another fucking thing.

“Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you’d go deeper.” Michael’s voice is dry enough to be bottled and sold as chardonnay. John reminds himself that whoever the killer is, he’s far away and is no immediate threat. Still, he brushes his hand against the bulge in his jacket where his pistol is.

“Right.” John swallows, pries his mind loose. “He was shot with a large caliber bullet —”

“Clearly,” Ethan says. Michael shuts him up with a look.

“— at relatively close range, so he didn’t hear the shooter sneaking up behind him.” He forces his eyes to Ethan’s face. “Where were you when you were — um, killed?”

“At home. In the bathroom. I turned to flush when it happened.” Ethan crosses his arms, like he’s challenging John to laugh. When he pulls them away, his sleeves are shiny with blood. “I had my music on.”

“Obviously.” Michael circles around to Ethan’s back. “And what do you make of this, Doctor? Lift up your shirt, Ethan.”

John follows. Beneath the entry wound, cut neatly into the flesh just above Ethan’s pants, are the words PISS OFF.

“This would’ve been done immediately postmortem, in order for it to show up on his ghost,” says Michael.

“If this one hadn’t told me about it, I’d never have known,” Ethan says, jerking his head in Michael’s direction. Michael makes some vague gesture Ethan seems to interpret as an okay to fix himself up. The wound and its associated gore vanishes, his trousers belt around his waist, and his shirt buttons itself up. One moment, he’s a murder victim; the next, a slightly disheveled office manager. Despite himself, John is more unnerved by this change than the first one. He’s seen injuries appear out of nowhere before. The opposite, not so much.

“I don’t see what we have to go on. If the police couldn’t figure it out —”

“Oh, honestly,” Michael says. “We have plenty of data; we simply need to follow it to its logical conclusion.”

“Which is?”

“Mr. Allard here is guilty of sexually harassing an employee —”

“Excuse me?” Ethan cuts in. “I’ll have you know I would never —”

“— I’m guessing a man with a history in combat or organized crime.”

“I’m not a pervert, for god’s sake —”

“Based on the population he could’ve conceivably harassed, I suspect the former,” Michael says, ignoring Ethan completely.

John spares a glance for the ghost. His entire face is red, as if he still had blood pressure and it could still spike. “How on earth could you possibly know that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” At John’s skeptical look, Michael shakes his head disparagingly. “Dear lord. Fine. The placement of the writing is sexually suggestive, but the writing itself is precisely the opposite: a command to back off. So, sexual harassment — could be assault but I’d expect more violence in the retaliation. The nature of the crime — well-planned, without any indications of violence outside of what was necessary to kill him, save of course the mutilation — suggests someone who knew what he was doing, but again, the writing tells us he had a personal motive.”

“How do you know it was a man?” John asks.

“I’m not taking this,” Ethan says, shaking from head to toe, and vanishes.

“He frequently patronized male prostitutes.”

“Which you know because . . .?” Michael raises an eyebrow. John holds up his free hand. “Right.” He pauses. “That was brilliant.”

Michael looks up. “Really?”

“Well, yeah.” John stares at the spot Ethan just vacated, and wishes he could reevaluate the evidence for himself.

“That’s not what people usually say.”

John finds that difficult to believe. “What do they usually say?”

Michael pauses, then smiles slightly. “‘Piss off.’”

John’s lips twitch at the corners. He runs his free hand through his hair. “So what do you need me for, anyway? Not forensics, clearly.”

“If we’re going to find the killer, I needed you to be familiar with the case as it stands.” Michael begins walking in the direction of the nearest park exit, and John follows. “I have a suspect, and I need you to talk to him.”

John glances at Michael, but doesn’t stop. It’s difficult enough to keep up with him, all long legs and unhindered stride. “Why me? There’s no way I’d get as much out of an interview as you would, if you’re anywhere near as good as I think you are.”

“I’ve explained this, John. You’re my face. When you go to the police, it can’t get out that someone else was investigating the case. They might find me. I’m sure you can provide an adequate account.” Skepticism shades the last sentence, but John doesn’t comment.

“What would be so wrong about that?”

“I don’t like the spotlight.”

“You?” John almost laughs. Save his reluctance to give his actual name, there is nothing about Michael Smith to incriminate him as a recluse.

Michael stops. John mimics him. “Are you really questioning the man who’s paying you ten thousand quid monthly to take credit for his work?”

John runs his tongue over his teeth. “I guess not.”

“Good. Now. I have reason to believe our killer is a man named Layton Capp. You’ll like him. He’s violent.”

**xx**

Capp is an infantryman turned cubicle worker, invalided out of Iraq three years ago. His left leg is stiff and he holds his upper body oddly, as though shying away from some pain.

“Medical officer?” Capp asks.

“Infantry. Happen to have a medical license.” He doesn’t ask how Capp knows. John has a similar sense for these things.

Capp smiles unpleasantly. “How can I help you . . .?”

John frees his cane hand and holds it out. “John. Watson.”

“How can I help you, John?” Capp’s handshake is just hard enough to hurt, a gesture John returns in kind.

“Did you know a man named Ethan Allard?”

Capp freezes. He regains himself in an instant, but not before John sees. “He was my boss. Killed, last year. Why?”

Michael told him not to lie, insofar as possible. “I’m investigating his death.”

“I thought the police gave up on him.”

“I’m not with the police.”

John watches carefully as Capp’s bearing changes. He stiffens and his features crease into hostility. “Then I don’t think I can help you.”

John looks him in the eye. “I think you killed him.” And oh, he thinks. Michael was right. It’s obvious, with a face in front of him and a dose of basic human intuition. Capp wouldn’t have been a bad sort, back in Iraq, but at home it was too much. “He was harassing you, wasn’t he?”

Three minutes later, Capp is splayed out on the floor. The knife he pulled is resting quite comfortably in John’s cane hand, and John has his knee to his throat. “You’re going to turn yourself in,” John says.

Capp struggles, bucking back suddenly, but John forces him down. He doesn’t notice that most of his weight is on his bad leg.

“All right,” Capp grunts. “I’ll — go down to the police station. Just let me up.”

“No. You’re going to use my phone. Right now.” John extracts his mobile from his pocket. It occurs to him that he doesn’t have a number — but, oh, there it is. Michael must’ve put it in. He selects it, then presses the phone to Capp’s ear.

Ten minutes later, the police arrive. It’s awkward, explaining precisely how he came to be holding a murderer at knife-point, and more than one officer offers him their suspicions. John is very conscious that he’s doing a paid job on behalf of a man he doesn’t really know.

It’s not till he gets home that he realizes he forgot his cane at Capp’s.

He thinks, well, this might work out after all.

**xx**

Michael’s text begin coming weekly, then biweekly. The number of gruesome murders the Met have left unsolved is higher than John might have thought, even taking into consideration the fact that he and Michael are dealing with a backlog of decades. Carol, a bank teller decapitated and left to rot in an untouched vault of gold bullion forty years ago, wants to find her killer as badly as she did then. John finds he’s truly happy to help. His hand hasn’t so much as twitched since Layton Capp, and he no longer thinks about the cane leaning under his window. He’s stopped going to therapy. He has room in his body to care about people again.

The effect on Michael is practically chemical — Carol’s particular case, which turns out to be a maze of dark alleyways and strange details (all five suspects are named Barbara Clarke), takes them four days to solve and three days to prove, and Michael spends the week wild-eyed and prickling at the edges.

The only downside is dealing with the police.

John is waiting to talk to Sergeant Donovan about one particular Ms. Clarke when Lestrade walks past, carrying an empty paper espresso cup in one hand and a chocolate biscuit in the other. Lestrade stops in front of him and sighs. The whole line of his shoulders sags under the movement. “You again?” John shrugs. “Solved another cold case, have you? Why don’t you come into my office?”

A lucky turn of events. Lestrade seems to be more open to outside help than any of the other officers John’s had to convince. “Thanks,” John says.

Lestrade throws away his espresso and leads him into a tiny, hyper-modern glass-and-steel office not very far from Donovan’s desk. He offers John a seat before sliding into his own. “Who is it this time?”  
“Carol Purcell,” John says. “She was decapitated thirty-eight years ago.” 

Lestrade massages his temple, and swallows a bite of his biscuit. “And I suppose you know who did it.”

“Yes. Um.” John pushes a file folder over Lestrade’s desk. “Barbara Clarke. Well, one of them.” He opens the folder and flips through it until he finds the one with the unfortunate middle name. “This one, specifically. All the proof’s in there.”

“Of course it is.” Lestrade closes the file and lays it atop a mound of others. “Look, Dr. Watson, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you need to stop.”

“Stop helping you?” John says mildly.

“Stop risking your life. There’s a reason civilians aren’t supposed to do what you’re doing. It won’t end well. Trust me.”

It bothers John, slightly, to be called a civilian, but that’s what he is now, for a given value of the word. “Have I ever been wrong?”

“You’ve been — look — you’ve been helpful. I’m not denying that, it would be ridiculous. But that’s not the point.”

“Have I done anything illegal?”

Lestrade opens his mouth, then closes it. “Not technically, no.”

Lestrade does not know about the concealed firearm John carries more often than not — though certainly not into a police station — and Lestrade does not know about the breaking and entering involved in solving this very case and half a dozen others. John is fine with that.

“Then I guess I’ll keep on,” John says, politely as he can. “Thank you, Inspector.” He stands to leave. Before he’s out of earshot, he hears Lestrade requesting the case file on Carol Purcell.

John’s glad. Carol deserves her justice.

**xx**

He takes a route through the park to get home, as he always does. He could hire all the taxis he likes, now, with Michael’s money, but cold or hot, he’s started enjoying the rhythm of it, especially now that he has two good legs. It’s a nice park, well-kept, never very crowded.

Plus, sometimes Michael is waiting for him. As he is today.

“You couldn’t have another case already,” John says, half-dreading, half-anticipating.

“No. Well, yes, but nothing I need your help with yet.”

Rather than stopping, John lets Michael fall into stride with him. “Want to get something to eat?” he asks on sudden impulse.

Michael glances at him. “I don’t eat when I’m working.”

“I’ve never actually seen you eat.”

“I try to keep busy.”

John smiles. It explains the man’s gaunt appearance, at least. They walk a few meters before John realizes Michael has no particular topic of conversation in mind. John clears his throat. “So. How did you know I’m like you? Out of curiosity.”

He catches Michael’s eye-roll in the periphery of his vision. “The ghosts told me. How else? Another medium in London? It’s the sort of news that travels.”

“They never mentioned you, before.”

“Of course not. They know I only take interesting cases. Grieving people aren’t interesting.”

“Pretty interesting to them, I’d think,” John says.

“You didn’t help them.”

He has John there. John inhales, exhales. Changes the subject. “Lestrade doesn’t want me doing this anymore. I don’t blame him. It’s a step away from vigilantism.”

Michael laughs, short and sharp. It’s a different laugh than the one he uses when they’re working, which is just as abbreviated but half-crazed with energy. “Who cares about Lestrade? He can’t stop you, and so long as you continue to be —”

“He can stop listening. He can tell the others to stop listening. Not much for it, after that.”

Above them, the sun is setting. A man and a woman walk past them, arms linked, her head on his shoulder. Michael eyes them as they pass. “He won’t.”

“You can’t —”

Michael sighs. “John.” He flavors the word with a deep, abiding condescension. “There’s a war on in London. And it’s not the law that’s winning. Lestrade isn’t entirely stupid; he won’t turn down an advantage.”

It’s a grave pronouncement, and not one John is entirely certain he understands. But the next time he leaves a file on Lestrade’s desk, Lestrade takes it without complaint.

**xx**

The envelopes keep coming. Once a month, John will come home and find ten thousand quid sitting somewhere conspicuous in his flat. He assumes Michael gets ghosts to deliver them; he seems to have a net of them cast out over the city, ready to haul in any datum of information he might need. Given how desperate they were for John’s help, he supposes he could have the same thing, if he’d just comfort some grieving loved ones every now and then. But that seems much sleazier than just not doing anything.

It occurs to him that with his newfound mental and financial stability, he could probably start trying to live a normal life in some capacity. There’s a girl at the launderette, Sarah, he’s talked with a few times, who is exactly John’s type. But he can’t bring himself to ask her out.

Michael starts turning up more after cases, and then between them. At first, he makes his appearances only in the park, falling into step with John before John can notice he’s there. But today, there’s a knock at the door, and when John leans into the peephole, it’s Michael standing outside. He pulls open the door. “Michael?”

“May I come in?”

John stands aside, and Michael walks past. John shuts the door. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m _bored_ ,” Michael says, and flops down onto John’s bed. The springs creak in protest.

“So why are you here?” John says, stressing the last word. Perhaps ironically, John does not consider himself a particularly interesting person. When the action stops, so does he.

“What else am I going to do?”

“I don’t know. How do you usually spend your time?”

“Before I met you?”

“Yes.” John crosses his arms and looks down over Michael, enjoying the temporary height advantage.

“I was bored.” Michael twists over on the bed so that he’s facing John. “People are so dull, John. Ghosts aren’t that much better. I don’t know why you are.”

“Thank you,” John says. Michael narrows his eyes at him, as though he’s trying to determine whether John is being sarcastic (he is), then sits up.

“No, I meant you’re better.”

“Better than ghosts,” John says. “Like I said, thank you.”

Michael heaves a sigh. “I’m attempting to compliment you.”

John sighs, a bit less dramatically, and pulls his desk chair over so that he can sit down too. “Oh, all right. Thank you. Really,” he says. “What do you want?”

Michael gives him a sober look. The atmosphere in the room shifts. “I need the missing piece of the puzzle,” he says, more quietly than John knew he could speak. “It’s why I keep going.”

“What puzzle?”

“ _Casus belli_ ,” Michael says. He rubs his hands down his face, heels pressing in from his hairline to his jaw. He sighs again and rolls over to face the wall.

John waits for a full minute before shaking his head and standing up.

“Make yourself at home,” he says at last, uselessly, and pushes the chair back under the desk. “Want a cuppa?”

Michael makes some noise John interprets as a negative, then stills so absolutely he may as well have left the flat. John glances back to reassure himself, then gets out the kettle.

He doesn’t mind the company, not really.

**xx**

The next knock comes when John is eating breakfast the next day. He looks down at the leftover Italian he doesn’t really want to eat, pushes the plate away, and gets up to answer. The man behind the door is not one he recognizes.

“Ah, Dr. Watson. So glad I caught you at home.” The man smiles without teeth. “Would you mind terribly if I came inside?”

“Who are you?” John asks. He can see some answers to that question for himself: the expensive suit, the absolute assurance in the man’s posture, and the umbrella he’s leaning on despite it having been dry for days all scream he’s from Michael’s world.

“That’s not important,” he says. “May I please come in?”

“I don’t make a habit of inviting strangers into my flat,” John says.

“A prudent habit, but still, I must insist. I hate doing anything so prosaic as making threats.”

Ah, John thinks. He considers turning the stranger away, just to see what would happen, but decides to let this play out. He invites the man inside.

Mental stability, indeed.

Once the door is closed behind him, the man gives the room a single disdainful sweep with his eyes, then fixes them firmly on John. It’s clearly a look meant to inspire discomfort. It doesn’t. “Want some tea?” John asks, and heads over to where he keeps the kettle and teabags.

“No, thank you,” the man says.

“Suit yourself.” John checks the kettle, finds it still has water in it, and turns it on. He looks up at the man, who is watching him with careful interest. “So do you want something?”

“You’ve done a lot of work for the police recently,” the man says.

John wonders if this is Michael’s shadiness finally brought to life. He sort of hopes so. “Not doing it for the police,” he says.

The man’s eyebrow lifts. “Then for whom? If I may be so bold.”

“The victims.”

“How noble.”

“If you say so.” John pulls a mug from a lonely corner of the counter, and sets it in easy reach. “Why do you care, exactly?”

The stranger twirls his umbrella over the tips of his fingers. “You’ve been paying your rent in cash for the past several months, have you not?”

The kettle boils. John ignores it. “How do you know that?”

The man smiles just so, and the umbrella stills against his leg. “Tell me, John. Have you met anyone unusual recently?”

“Just you,” John says, and sets about making his tea. The whistle stops, leaving a hollow feeling in his ears. “Can’t see how it’s any of your business.”

“If you’ve become involved with the man I believe you have, it most certainly is my business.”

“I’m not ‘involved’ with anyone.” John wraps his left hand around the mug, and takes a comforting mouthful. He takes a seat in his desk chair.

“Your phone records show you’ve received an alarming number of texts from someone signing himself ‘MS.’”

“How do you know that?” John repeats, agitation creeping into his voice for the first time. “How the bloody hell could you possibly know that?”

The man gives him an arch look. “I know he’s paying you to . . . keep him out of the spotlight, shall we say, but I’d be willing to pay you substantially more if you’d just provide me with information.”

“No.” John sets down his tea, and gets to his feet. The man doesn’t react, except to follow him calmly with his eyes.

“All I want is the name he’s operating under.”

“No,” John repeats. He pushes a hand into the stranger’s shoulder, and pulls open the door. “Get out.”

The man’s face sets. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Get out,” John says, more forcefully.

“Given that there is a sniper across the street with his sights locked on the back of your head,” the man says, and sidesteps away when John freezes, “I rather think I won’t. Now shut the door.”

John has no proof that what he’s being told is true, but it seems healthiest to take the threat at face value. He shuts the door.

“Give me the name he’s operating under, and you can continue on with your life.” The man holds his umbrella out in front of his legs like a cane.

John breathes in deeply, and resists the urge to duck for cover. He locks eyes with the stranger. “Michael Smith,” he says.

“How generic,” the man says. He smiles again, and John wants to carve his lips from his face. “You’ve been a great help. Hopefully I won’t have to come calling again. Good night, Doctor.”

He opens the door, and is gone. John ducks into the bathroom. He wishes his gun weren’t locked in his desk.

He has no way of contacting Michael. No way of warning him, or seeking his help, or doing whatever it is that needs to be done.

No wait, he thinks. Of course he does.

“Someone,” he calls out into the empty air. “I need you to deliver a message.”

No one appears. He calls again, and again, and just as he decides it won’t work, a blonde girl in skintight red leggings condenses in the bathtub. “Yeah?” she says. “You need help?”

“Yes, please, I need you to —”

“Will you tell my dad Mum’s cheating on him?” the girl asks. She stretches out her legs, and looks at him skeptically from underneath heavy eyelashes. “And that it’s not his fault I OD’d, so he doesn’t have to put up with it?”

John hesitates. “Yeah. Fine. I just need you to get a message to Michael Smith.”

“And that I didn’t do it on purpose?” The girl pulls her denim jacket close around her body. She looks very young. Some of John’s haste wears away.

“I can try. He might not believe me.”

“But you’ll try?” At John’s weary nod, the girl pulls her lower lip between her teeth, and when John blinks, she’s sitting on the loo. “Okay. What do you want?”

“A message. To Michael Smith. Although that’s not his real name —”

“D’you mean the guy who solves murders?” John gives an affirmative. The girl frowns. “He’s hard to find.”

“Can you do it? Tell him I need to see him.”

“If you’re going to help me — yeah, ’course I can.” She grins, and disappears.

John shakes his head to clear the image of her. He takes a deep breath, and moves over to the bathroom door. The next room is small enough that even if he hit the floor, he won’t have sufficient cover to make it to the corridor. Slowly, he pushes the door open, and sticks his head out. When it isn’t immediately blown off, he takes it as a sign that he’s safe for the moment.

On the desk, next to his rapidly cooling cup of tea, his phone vibrates. He nearly trips over the chair grabbing it. _Five minutes. MS._

Four minutes later, there’s a knock at the door. John opens it, and steps aside to let Michael in before shutting it. In a moment of paranoia, he moves over to the window and pulls down the blinds. “That didn’t take long,” he says.

“Your messenger travels at the speed of death,” Michael says. “And I happened to be nearby. What’s going on?”

“A man showed up at the flat. He wanted to know about you.”

Michael stills. “What did he look like?”

“Tall. Forties. Carried an umbrella.” John crosses his arms. “Do you know him?”

“What did you tell him?”

John rubs the back of his neck. “Your name. He was going to kill me.”

“Oh, that’s so like him,” Michael says, his lip curling, and starts to pace. “Well, no matter, he’s not getting anywhere with just the name. Dammit, John.”

“So you know who he is.”

“An old enemy. Listen to me: You cannot let him find out what you can do.”

“Who is he?”

“The most dangerous man you’ll ever meet.” Michael crosses the entire length of the flat several times in several seconds. He looks like a clock pendulum, swinging and swinging, until it hurts John’s eyes.

John crosses his arms. “Yes, but who is he? If he’s going to be pointing guns at my head, I’d like to know his name.”

Michael stops. He gives John a hard, measuring look. “Mycroft Holmes,” he says at last. “He’s the government.”

“He’s from the government? What’s he want with you?”

“I didn’t say he’s from the government. I said he is the government.” Michael’s eyes are cold and colorless.

“What does that mean? Michael —”

“It means that if he finds out what you are, you will never see the light of day again.” Michael fixes his gaze on the middle distance. He breathes in. He doesn’t seem to breathe out. “We’ll need to be careful from now on, John.”

John studies Michael carefully. “Is that what happened to you?”

Michael refocuses on him. “What do you mean?”

“Did he do something to you?”

“No,” Michael says.

John pulls a hand over his face. Contrary to his expectations, he feels something inside him unclench. “There’s a lot you need to tell me.”

“I don’t think so.”

John tries, but he can’t think of anything to say to that. Nothing he thinks would actually work.

When it becomes clear the conversation is over, Michael pulls his coat on tighter. “I need data,” he says. “If Mycroft is looking for me, I need to be certain he won’t be successful.”

John moves to get the door, but stops when his fingers reach the metal. “At least tell me your name.”

“If you know it, you can tell him.”

“He already knows it. I’m not stupid. I know this isn’t all for my benefit.”

Michael’s lips thin, and he draws himself up to greater height, or seems to. “In comparison with me and in comparison with him, not only are you stupid, you’re an idiot. You prove that every time I see you.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not an insult. It’s a statement of fact. Tell me, John. What do you know about me? What have you deduced in all the months we’ve known each other?”

John’s jaw locks shut. Eventually he manages to say, “You have money.”

“Oh, and what gave that away? The ten thousand quid I pay you each month? My clothes? My accent? And it’s still wrong.” Michael’s face is hard and still. John watches him warily. “Here’s what I know about you: Your family has a long military tradition, a tradition your father ignored but which you took up with gusto after being attacked in — oh, your early twenties. You went into hospital with all your grandfather’s war stories buzzing around in your brain and came out wanting to a doctor. You decided you could have both. And after you got out of the army — between the day you left and the day you met — not a day went by that you didn’t fantasize about killing someone. You felt guilty, but not guilty enough to turn me down.”

John’s mouth shapes silent nonsense. “How . . .?”

“The fact that you don’t know proves my point. Now, may I go, or will you ask more questions I won’t answer?”

Silence holds the room for an uncomfortable pulse of seconds. John opens the door. Michael sweeps out, coat flapping behind him, leaving John alone.

He notices absently that his hand is shaking. He shoves it into his pocket.


	2. Chapter 2

Michael is gone for four days. It bothers John more than it ought; moments of stomach-gnawing anxiety punctuate his usual routine whenever the thought occurs to him that he might be alone for good.

The first day he moves from the park (not hoping, he tells himself) to the grocery and then back to the flat. He browses online for combat veteran support groups, finds several, makes plans to attend none. He manages to kill several hours catching up with various medical journals, then stumbles across an article on first aid for gunshot wounds and has to stop. In the end, he can’t bring himself to walk across the street to the liquor shop.

The second day he calls for the blonde girl he promised to help. It takes a few tries after he realizes he has no idea what her name is, but eventually she pops into existence on top of his bed, the cheap old springs squawking under her weight. She looks young and hopeful, which is ridiculous because she’s dead.

“So what’s your name, then?” John asks. “We should probably start there.”

“Chels,” the girl says. “Well, Chelsea Breen. Dad’s Robert.”

John nods, and writes the names on a little spiral-bound notepad he found tucked in some corner or another. “Okay. Right. So we need a way to contact your dad, and then tell him — what we need to tell him. Is there some kind of procedure for this?” He pauses to process an idea. “Why don’t you e-mail him? I get e-mails from ghosts all the time.”

“We can only send them to you.” Chels brushes a strand of hair from her face, and leans against the wall. “Everything seems to work like that.”

“Oh.” That explains a lot. “Well. I suppose I can write him, and fill it with things only you would know.” Chels shrugs, bony shoulders up to her jaw. “Let’s type something up, then.” He opens his laptop and taps the icon for a word processor.

John tries to take the letter as dictation, to get the voice right. It’s a struggle, prodding her into giving him the kind of detail he needs, and more than once she bites her hand, red-eyed and tight-voiced, and blinks out of existence for a few minutes before they can continue.

 _Dear Dad_ , the letter opens. _This is Chelsea. I know I’ve died, but it’s really okay. I don’t think there’s a heaven, but maybe I just haven’t gotten there yet._

It takes two hours, all in all. There’s no quick, greeting card ready way to inform your father that his wife is cheating on him and that his daughter didn’t kill herself, and explaining the afterlife doesn’t make things simpler. And of course Chels has more things she wants to say, apologies and forgiveness she didn’t know she needed to offer until she couldn’t.

When they’re done, John reads it through one more time. Chels picks at her leggings with long, glittery fingernails and doesn’t look at him. John inhales. “Won’t this freak him out?” he asks.

“He won’t remember. Well, that’s what the others say. Like, he’ll know but he won’t actually know.”

Bloody ghosts, John thinks. “Right. Well. I don’t have a printer. Will this work if I send it as an e-mail?”

“Should,” Chels says.

So John sends the e-mail and sends Chels on her way, to do whatever it is ghosts do. Wait for her dad to open it, probably. And then . . . what? 

What happens to ghosts who get what they want? Do they finally depart the mortal plane, or something equally poetic? Surely if everyone who became a ghost stayed a ghost, he’d have seen more Romans and people in frilly collars wandering the streets. As it is, he’s not met anyone who died earlier than 1850 or so.

John doesn’t know. He wonders a little, like he wonders about his heart stopping, or about anything that’s happened to him since he got home. Compared to Mycroft Holmes and the mysterious Michael Smith, however, it doesn’t seem worth his time.

The third day he looks for a new flat. He considers one on Baker Street, then decides it’s not worth the effort.

The fourth day, he returns home to find Michael there, cross-legged on the bed and typing something rapidly on John’s laptop. “Oh, there you are,” he says without looking up.

“How did you — oh, never mind.” John drops his groceries onto the floor by the counter. “I almost thought you weren’t coming back.”

Michael mutters something disparaging and gives a particularly vigorous click. “Do you have the treacle?”

“The — what?” He’s not giving John time to berate him for disappearing, which is both irritating and a relief. “Treacle?”

“I texted you about it days ago,” Michael says, and closes the laptop. “It’s for the case.”

“The case.”

“Do you mean to be this incompetent, or is it instinctual? Here, give me your mobile.” He holds out his hand expectantly, and after a bit of staring, John hands the phone over. Michael’s fingers fly rapidly over the keys before throwing it back several seconds later. John catches it by pinning it against his chest. “There.”

“This is an ad from my service provider,” John says.

“No, it’s — never mind. Treacle, John, do you have it?”

“No on me, no,” John says. “Why do you need it?”

“We need to prove Opal Abbott killed her husband.”

“Do we.” John takes a steadying breath. “What about Mycroft Holmes? You know, with the umbrella? And the sniper rifle?”

“Oh, he’s still out there,” Michael says. “But he’s occupied for the moment. You’re in no immediate danger. Now, Opal Abbott.”

**xx**

Lestrade’s not happy to arrest an old woman, but murder is murder and the case John presents is a firm one. Opal Abbott poisoned her husband’s dessert forty-two years ago. One of her grandchildren actually tries to punch John, but John manages to put an end to the brawl before it becomes one. If he’s not on a case, he doesn’t want to fight someone he can’t kill. He feels rotten about the damage he’s done to their family.

As usual, Michael stays well away from the police, and doesn’t show up until John heads back through the park. They walk as they always have, strolling along in the near-dark.

“You were gone for four days,” John says.

“Yes,” Michael replies. “I needed to know how much Mycroft knew.”

“And how much is that?”

“Not much. Don’t worry.”

John side-eyes him. “You tell me the man is going to lock me up and experiment on me —”

“Not experiment on you. Primarily. I’m sure you could be more immediately useful than that.” Michael’s coat flutters in the breeze; in the evening light, he looks like a three-dimensional shadow.

“Wonderful.”

“He’s hardly going to guess you can see ghosts, John. That would require knowledge of the otherworld which he is sorely and absolutely lacking.”

“Then what’s he want with you?”

Michael’s face darkens. “This again? I thought I made it clear —”

“That I’m an idiot and you’re not going to tell me anything? I guess you did.” For several minutes, they fall into an uncomfortable silence. They aren’t able to swim their way out until they reach the park exit. 

“Will you at least tell me if I’m in danger?”

“Of course you’re in danger.”

John wishes the thought didn’t warm him in quite the way it does. “All right,” he says after a pause. “Thank you.”

“I wasn’t expecting thanks.” Michael is watching him, equal parts predatory and wary. He wants John to say the right thing here. Strangely, John finds himself wanting to say it as well.

He sighs. “At least you’re an honest liar,” he says. “Dinner?”

Michael looks pained at the suggestion. “No, but —” He stops. “I shouldn’t want to tell you anything.” He looks at John, his expression aghast. “John, are we friends?”

“What?” John says sharply, more in surprise than anger. Michael misinterprets.

“Ah, no. All right. I’ll be sure to inform you if —”

“No, we are,” John says. He’s not sure why. Not out of pity, certainly — Michael Smith does not inspire pity. Perhaps it’s true. His definition of “friend,” like so many other laws of his universe, was shifted several slots to the left after Afghanistan. He thinks Michael might fit the new one, maybe more than anyone else.

Not that he has anyone else.

They stand awkwardly. “I’ll be sure to inform you if Mycroft intends to visit you again,” Michael says after a beat.

“Great,” John says.

They go their separate ways.

**xx**

Two days later, five blocks from his flat, John’s phone vibrates in his trouser pocket. _The black car is Mycroft. He won’t kill you. MS._ John looks out at the street, and sure enough, a black luxury sedan is pulling up beside him. The back door swings open. Mycroft sits there, next to the window, umbrella between his knees. Oh, thank you, Michael, John thinks.

“Oh, John. Lovely to see you. Do get in,” Mycroft says. John glances up and down the pavement, and at the windows of buildings. He has no visual evidence, but he can guess the implied threat. Michael’s reassurances notwithstanding, John slides in. In the front seat, across from Mycroft, he can see a dark headed woman and the edge of a mobile phone. The driver has fair hair, but apart from that, John can tell nothing about him. “I imagine ‘Michael’ told you who I am.” John says nothing, but Mycroft seems to find confirmation of his theory in John’s face. “This is — what’s your name today, dear?”

“Anthea,” the woman says without looking up.

“This is Anthea.”

“Nice to meet you,” John says. He holds Mycroft’s gaze levelly. “Haven’t found him yet, then?”

“I hardly expected it to be easy.” Mycroft fingers the curve of his umbrella handle. “He is a genius, after all.”

“I s’pose he is.”

“No, really. I do believe he’s the greatest detective to ever live. The Shakespeare of deduction, if you will.”

“I can believe that.”

“He’s my brother.”

It takes a second, but when these three words sink in, John feels as though he’s been woken from a deep sleep with a bucket full of ice water. He does a poor job of hiding it, too. A smirk curls Mycroft’s lips like singed paper.

“I don’t see the resemblance,” John says when he regains himself.

“I take after Mummy,” Mycroft says. “Tell me, John. Do you trust him?”

“Not remotely,” John says, without hesitation. “But I’m not going to tell you anything.”

For a long moment, the car is silent save for the quiet hum of the engine and the click of Anthea’s nails on her phone. Mycroft’s expression is unreadable, and John does his best to ensure his is, too.

“He’s been missing for five months,” Mycroft says at last.

“Has he.”

“I’m trying to do what’s best for him. Surely you understand.”

“I don’t understand anything that’s happened since I met him,” John says. “Can I go now?”

“I could have you killed.”

John’s jaw sets. “Try.”

Mycroft’s tongue runs along his teeth. His expression makes it clear he’s in no way intimidated. After a moment, he nods at the rearview mirror. The car stops. “Good night, Dr. Watson.”

“Thanks for the ride,” John says. He shuts the door just a bit harder than he needs to, and walks the remaining block to his building.

He’s not angry till he’s home and his mind settles a bit. Then it comes on suddenly, fogging through his body until he can’t really see out of his eyes anymore, isn’t really living inside himself. He feels and he remembers and for the time being, that’s all he’s capable of. He thinks he punches a wall, only because his hand hurts. Probably he curses.

Is he angry at Mycroft Holmes, with his tattooed-on calm and his death threats and his thousand-pound suits? God knows the mere thought of the man is enough to set a scream building in John’s throat. And it’s easy to be angry with Michael — whatever his name is — for dangling the truth over his head like a steak over an especially stupid dog. He kicks at the bed frame.

Visions of desert landscapes and Afghan men with submachine guns play past his eyes, and his hands itch for a weapon — any weapon. He thinks, later, that the sheer extent of his rage probably has to do with PTSD. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.

Eventually he calms. He lowers himself onto the floor, shaking, and weeps.

**xx**

Michael is there when he wakes up, messing with the computer. John takes one look at him and closes his eyes, hoping that somehow the movement went unnoticed. Of course he’s not that lucky.

“I know you’re awake.” Michael closes the laptop. “And I know you spoke with Mycroft last night.”

“Go away, Michael.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be daft. You were abducted by the most powerful man in Britain. Something happened.”

John throws the covers to the foot of the bed, and swings his legs over the side. He didn’t change out of his clothes last night, and they stick to him uncomfortably. “Well, maybe I’m not going to tell you.”

“It’s imperative that you —”

“Not until you tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Mycroft told you something.”

“Brilliant,” John says, saturating the word with a relationship’s worth of sarcasm. “You really are the Shakespeare of deduction.”

Michael’s eyes narrow. “He told you about our . . . connection.”

“Well, yes. Yes he did. That and you’ve apparently been missing five months. Not all that longer than we’ve known each other, yeah? So what was it? Debts? Did you kill someone?”

John’s voice fades, leaving the flat quiet. He finds he’s gotten to his feet.

“No,” Michael says. “I didn’t do anything.”

John runs a hand through his hair. “Then why does your brother think you’re missing?”

“Someone forced me to — fall off the grid. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Who? Why?”

“Why do you think?”

John takes a breath, and forces himself to think. When he factors out the criminal reasons someone like Michael might have left his life, the answer becomes obvious. “You got too close to something,” he says.

“Actually, someone. John . . .”

John massages his eyebrow with the tips of two of his fingers. “Don’t,” he says. “Let me have my morning. I’ll talk to you later.”

Michael doesn’t move.

“I’m going to take a shower,” John says. “When I get back, I want you to be gone.”

He carefully doesn’t slam the bathroom door, and tries not to get angry. Once he’s standing against the press of the water, he feels heavy, his bones too old to support the weight of him.

There’s more to the story, of course. There’s something — or more likely many things — Michael isn’t telling him. And there’s something that keeps bothering him, something he should know but doesn’t. Something he’s overlooked.

When he comes out of the bathroom, Michael is gone. John makes breakfast, piling scrambled eggs on top of hastily-made, scorched toast.

Outside, it starts to rain. John’s shoulder twinges.

He doesn’t leave the flat. He scrunches up on his tiny bed with his computer like a teenager and clicks around aimlessly. Most of the time he pays no attention to the screen; he stares into the middle distance and listens to his own thoughts. It’s unpleasant.

As expected, there’s a knock on the door around two, and he forces himself to his feet. He swings open the door without checking to see who it is; either it’s Michael or it’s not. John doesn’t care which.

It’s Michael. “Oh, come in,” John says.

“John,” Michael says, once he’s inside, “there’s no reason I should want to tell you anything.”

“No, I gathered that, thanks.” John crosses his arms and lifts his eyebrows. “I need to know what’s going on.”

“I want to tell you. I don’t know why.”

“It’s what you do with friends. If we are friends.”

There’s a flyspeck change in Michael’s face, a shift so small John is surprised he notices it. “My name is Sherlock Holmes,” he says. John gives him a moment to continue, then lets himself process when nothing else is forthcoming.

“‘Sherlock,’” he says. “‘Mycroft.’ Are your parents drunks, or something?”

“Six months ago, I was investigating a man named Moriarty.”

“And he sent you into hiding.”

“He failed to stop me,” Michael — Sherlock — says. “I’m continuing my investigation, regardless of my circumstances.”

“Didn’t say you shouldn’t,” John says. The world has taken on a sharp, almost unreal veneer, like he’s looking down on it through a broken magnifying glass. “All right. Count me in.”

“John, there’s a reason I didn’t —”

“How much danger have you put me in already? Between your brother and chasing half the murderers of London through soggy back alleys, I’m already dead twice over. I can handle a bit more.”

Sherlock appraises him. “I still haven’t told you everything.”

“When have you ever?” John walks across the room, and pulls his gun from its drawer. He checks that it’s loaded, and lays it flat on the desk. An offer.

“I have most of the ghosts in the city spying for me. Perhaps I don’t need your help.”

“Ghosts,” John says, “can’t shoot people.” He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t want Sherlock to say anything else. He wants to go out and find this Moriarty and kill him, and never finish this conversation, ever.

Sherlock smiles slightly. “John,” he says, “I’m dead.”

**xx**

For the first time, John reaches out to touch Sherlock. He isn’t there.

**xx**

Five months ago, Sherlock had his wits and his connections and his courage, and he thought it would be enough to bring this Moriarty down. John can guess this much. He can guess at Sherlock’s reasons for concealing the fact of his death from him — something to do with Mycroft, no doubt. But he can’t — 

He thinks, all this time, I’ve been leaning on thin air.

“I’m an idiot,” John says.

Sherlock doesn’t reply.

“Where’d you get the money?” The question comes unbidden. It’s the least painful.

“I stole it from Mycroft. His account in the Cayman Islands. He noticed, of course, but he assumes I’m living on it, so he allows it.” Sherlock stops, as though waiting for John’s disapproval, then goes on. “I take twenty thousand pounds every month for appearance’s sake. Half of it goes into the Thames.”

“I’m living off money you stole from the most powerful man in Britain,” John says.

“Yes.”

“You dump ten thousand quid in the Thames every month.”

“Yes.”

“And your brother doesn’t know —” John hesitates. “He doesn’t know.”

Sherlock inhales. Appears to inhale. “No.”

John nods. The room is spinning, just a little bit, and maybe he wants to throw up; he’s not tethered to his body enough to feel it. Feel anything. “What are we going to do? About Moriarty. And Mycroft.”

“I’m going to unravel Moriarty’s network, as I’ve been doing since well before this — inconvenience. And you’re going to hold Mycroft off.”

“Off — oh, no. Sherlock, you can’t keep letting him — it’s cruel.”

“He’s cruel,” Sherlock says sharply. “What I told you before was true. If he finds out I’m dead, he’ll have _questions_. And from there he only needs to make a leap of intuition before you’re . . .” He shakes his head. “I won’t allow it.”

“You said he’d never guess about the ghosts.”

“I said he’d never guess with the information currently in his possession.”

“So you want me to give him false hope.”

“I want you to display an ounce of self-preservation for once in your life,” Sherlock says. And disappears.

John closes his eyes, bracing himself against the world. He stands there for a few minutes, trying to decide whether this — this whole situation — is going to hit him yet. When it becomes clear it won’t, he grabs his coat, and goes out for lunch.

**xx**

London is full of ghosts. Some of them are unmistakable: nineteenth century street children playing amid Ford Fiestas and people babbling into mobile phones. Others, the more recently dead, blend in perfectly with the crowds. Their clothes are at most a few years out of date. Many of them have technology of their own.

Some things, human logics, remain in place for them. If John looks at the ground beneath them, they cast shadows. If they walk, he hears their footsteps. He remembers the tap of Sherlock’s fingers on his keyboard, the sound of him knocking at the door. Somehow that was enough.

For several months he labored under the impression that Sherlock was a shadowy and eccentric member of the upper crust who was nearly certainly caught up in Deep Dark Secrets and conspiracies of some nature. Turns out he’s an unfriendly ghost with a posh accent and a scary brother. Very little has changed, if one looks from the right perspective.

John thinks they can still be friends. He doesn’t know if the thought will stick, but he thinks it.

**xx**

Mycroft interrupts John’s lunch just as the food arrives. He slides into the vinyl seat across from John, and lays his umbrella at the end of the table, parallel with the window. A long black car lurks blatantly by the curb outside. “Great,” John says.

“Good afternoon, Doctor.”

“I’ll have you know your brother is a liar and apparently a bank robber, but I’m still not telling you anything.”

“He told you about the Caymans, then,” Mycroft says, unperturbed. “It seems he trusts you more and more.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

Mycroft makes some elegant little gesture no one earning under a million pounds annually is legally allowed to do. John is frankly surprised that someone like that would deem to sit in a shithole restaurant like this. “There’s something you don’t want me to know. Or, more likely, something he doesn’t want me to know. And since you two seem have become such good friends, I know you could tell me, with the right incentive.” He tilts his head, just slightly. “Don’t pretend otherwise. It’s only a matter of time.”

John unwraps his chopsticks, and plucks up a wonton between them. He eats it without replying. He doesn’t know if he could stop himself telling the truth, otherwise.

“Now, although my dear brother has likely overstated my position, I’m sure you understand that I’m in no way lacking for resources.”

John swallows. “The snipers gave that away,” he says, and continues eating.

“Would you like another demonstration?” He says it like he’s selling a car.

“Maybe,” John says, and pulls his napkin from his lap. He clears some pork from the corner of his mouth. “Depends if I’m armed.”

“You’re not,” Mycroft says. He sounds certain.

“I’m always armed,” John says very seriously. Whether he’s choosing to obey English law regarding concealed weapons today or not, anything he has in arm’s reach is dangerous. And if there’s nothing, he still has his body.

Mycroft smiles. “Oh, yes, I forget. You can kill man in eighty ways using only the zinc spot on your fingernail. Medicine and warfare make such a lethal combination.”

John straightens up. He sets his chopsticks at either side of his plate. “Yes,” he says. “And you can threaten me, or my family, or torture me. You can recite my phone record and tell me the names of every girl I’ve ever kissed. There are things about me you will never know, and I’m not telling you anything.”

Mycroft’s eyebrow pulls up slowly. “Things about you,” he repeats. Something in John’s gut sinks, so deep he doubts he’ll retrieve it. “I see. Are you certain, Dr. Watson, that you don’t want to tell me anything about the whereabouts of my brother?”

“Yes,” John says, without feeling.

Mycroft stands up. “Then expect me.” He leaves without saying anything further.

John pays for his wonton. By the time he gets home, he’s not numb anymore.

**xx**

Sherlock is waiting for him. Not outside, like a normal person, like a living person, but inside, standing in the middle of the flat. John feels nauseous. “It’s strange,” Sherlock says as John closes the door. “I couldn’t stay away.”

John almost says, “I wish you had,” but swallows the words. “What do you want?”

“You’ve spoken to Mycroft.”

“Yes,” John says. He pauses. “I think he’s suspicious.”

Sherlock peers at him, eyes narrow. “Why? What did you say?”

“I told him there are ‘things about me he’ll never know.’” John holds his body steady. Fear prickles at him.

“Fool,” Sherlock hisses, and is suddenly a blur of restless motion. He rubs his fingers through his hair, pacing-but-not-moving, as ghostly as John has ever seen him. “It was bad enough to begin with, and you — dammit, John. He’s been very light on you so far. We can’t afford this.”

“You think it’s likely he’ll pull ‘ghosts’ out of a comment like that?”

“It won’t be his first thought.” Sherlock stops. “Yes. All right. He won’t do anything to drive you away from me, so long as he thinks you’re his only link to me. We can rule out torture and death for the time being.”

“Right,” John says weakly.

“On the other hand, if he finds out I’m dead and you’ve been concealing that from him, he will kill you, or worse.”

“I thought you said he’d lock me up.”

“They’re not mutually incompatible,” Sherlock says. He takes a few steps, fingers steepled in front of his face. “Yes. All right. They’re pulling my left foot out of the Thames now, which means we have until the DNA test come back. That’s several weeks at least. Excellent. I might even have Moriarty by then.”

John’s gaze drops as though compelled by gravity to Sherlock’s feet, which are both safe encased in their expensive shoes. “Your foot,” he repeats. He remembers Ethan Allard “showing himself” and feels ill at the thought of Sherlock doing the same.

“Yes, I was just there. There’s significant decomposition, but DNA should still be viable. I was aware of the dismemberment but I assumed Moriarty had me cremated as well.” Sherlock stops. “Well, obviously,” he says, although it isn’t. “John. You need to get yourself on the case.”

John hasn’t had time to breathe since Mycroft invited himself to lunch. Sherlock’s last sentence — such a plain turning point in the events so far — feels like someone has slapped a chunk of hamburger out of his trachea. He still feels dizzy and overwhelmed, but at least he’s alive. “Sherlock,” he says. The name feels unfamiliar on his tongue.

“What is it?” He’s doing the manic ghost thing again, vanishing and reappearing in all corners of the little room.

“D’you think you could possibly explain what you’re thinking?”

Sherlock looks up at John and manages to stay grounded on the mortal plane. “It’s not obvious?”

“They’re pulling your feet out of the River Thames, and you want obvious?”

Sherlock’s mouth twitches downwards. “Just one foot. I don’t know where he’s put the other one.”

“Mm,” John says with all the equilibrium he can manage. “Help me out, here.”

Sherlock lets loose a sigh. “Mycroft, for obvious reasons, has never seen us together. Correct?”

“Yeah, but — you don’t think you can convince him I don’t know you. I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed.”

“But we didn’t have to meet face-to-face. I could have arranged for everything you’ve done, long before I disappeared.”

John closes his eyes. Counts to five, clears the dust. “This is impossible.”

When John opens his eyes, Sherlock is smiling. The game is on.

**xx**

“Thought you’d finally quit.” Lestrade taps a Biro on a closed case file. “It’s been weeks.”

John stares at the folder. Sherlock — lurking behind John’s shoulder, as unnoticed as a shadow in a dark room — has told him it’s _his_ folder, the one about the foot, and John can’t make up his mind as to how to feel about seeing the inside of it. “I’ve been busy. I’d like to help on this case with — with the foot. I have some ideas.”

“Read the paper, did you?” Somehow, the story of the foot ended up in the news. Sherlock thinks Moriarty arranged it. Thinks Moriarty is arranging something nefarious. John shrugs. Lestrade leans back in his chair. “I can’t just drop you into the middle of an ongoing investigation.”

“What rubbish,” Sherlock says, and John does his best to ignore him. “He did it for me all the time.”

“If you don’t let me on, I’ll just turn up in a few days with the answer,” John says.

Lestrade’s mouth contorts. “I could arrest you for interference.”

John shrugs again. Sherlock appears behind Lestrade. "Tell him to give you one week. We can solve it by then. All you need is to see it.”

“Give me one week,” John dutifully repeats. It takes every second of his experience as a medium not to allow his eyes to flicker to where Sherlock is standing. “I just need to see it. The foot.”

“Oh, is that all? Tell me something, Doctor: How do I know you’re not involved? The other cases were cold enough that I gave you a pass, but forensics tells me this thing’s been in the water less than six months. Wasn’t too long after that we started seeing you. And I know you’re a killer. Don’t tell me you’re not. I know you’re a soldier.”

John massages the bridge of his nose. Sherlock glares at Lestrade with the sort of contempt usually reserved for dogs too stupid to be house-trained. “Do you actually think I’m the killer?”

Lestrade falters. The tempo of his pen-tapping increases then stops altogether. “Yes. Fine. All right.”

Behind him, Sherlock mouths “finally” and makes an exasperated sweep of his arms.

John stands. “Thank you very much, Inspector,” he says, and offers his hand. Lestrade takes it, and gives it one weary shake.

“Come by in two hours. I should have time then.”

**xx**

Ghosts hang around Barts like moths caught in a fan of light, watching the living world in a stunned confusion, or frantically trying and failing to interact with it. The mortuary is quieter. It smells cold and clean and chemical, filled with the same weighty hush as a library. Long fluorescent lights embedded in the ceiling cast a veneer of unreality over the room.

The pathologist, a mousy woman as pale as the light, is finishing up something on a clipboard as they enter. She starts a little when the door opens. “Oh, it’s good we’ve got this one,” Sherlock says, appearing suddenly behind her. John had been wondering when he’d show up. “She’s manageable.”

“We’re here to see the foot,” Lestrade says. “This is Dr. John Watson. He’s a consultant. This is Dr. Molly Hooper.” John nods at Hooper, and smiles, trying to ease her clearly frayed nerves.

She makes a tiny gesture in John’s general direction. “A consult — um, yes.” She puts down her paperwork and moves over to a cold cupboard. She pulls it open smoothly. On the tray, looking innocuous under its sheet, is what must surely be Sherlock’s foot. Sherlock, from what John can see in his peripheral vision, doesn’t seem to have a reaction to this. Hooper pulls back the sheet.

“There you go, Doctor,” Lestrade says. “What do you think?”

After so long in the river, it’s nearly skeletal, which makes this easier. More impersonal. “I’ll show you it fresh later,” Sherlock says. John shoots him as much of a glare as he can. He helps himself to a pair of latex gloves from a dispenser.

“How long until DNA comes back?” John asks, and leans over the remains. A number of bones — including the two smallest toes — are missing, carried off by fish or currents. Sherlock tilts his head at some detail but says nothing.

“We’re rushing it.” Lestrade crosses his arms. John looks up. That’s not good, he thinks.

“Yeah?”

“Partly it’s the media. But mainly we’re concerned this is connected to a — missing persons case.”

“They noticed I was gone, did they?” Sherlock says, almost quietly. He gestures at John to straighten up. “Ask him about me.”

Unable to argue, John braces himself. “Sherlock Holmes?”

Hooper makes a strange noise. Lestrade spares a glance for her, then gives John and appraising look. “How did you know?”

Sherlock reappears in another part of the room. “Tell him you heard about me in the news. That it mentioned I work with the police.”

John shrugs, looks back at the foot. “I read the news. He worked with the police. It was an educated guess.”

Lestrade pinches the bridge of his nose. “He used to make a lot of those.” He looks up. “If this,” he says, gesturing, “is him, we need to find out. And we need to find out who did this. Do you understand me, Doctor?”

John doesn’t look at Sherlock, or at what remains of his body. Instead, he says, in the tone with which a soldier receives orders, “Yes.”

“Then you know why you’re on this case.” Lestrade breathes in deep, and keeps it for a moment. “How long do you need?”

“We can go,” Sherlock says.

“Ten minutes,” John says. Sherlock’s eyebrows crease.

Lestrade nods. He briefly closes his eyes. “I’ll be outside. Dr. Hooper here’ll supervise you.”

“Of course,” says John.

Lestrade glances back at Hooper with something like pity on his face before leaving. “I’ve seen everything I need to,” Sherlock says. “There’s no reason to —”

John ignores him. “Dr. Hooper,” he says, “did — do you know Sh — Holmes personally?”

Hooper, who had been quietly trying to look occupied in the back of the room, freezes. “Um.”

“It’s okay.” John rubs his bad shoulder. There’s a weariness in him, settling closer to his bones every minute. “I just saw how you reacted, earlier.”

Hooper bites her lip, wavers on the verge of words for a second or two, then very suddenly starts crying. Not bawling, or sobbing, but just hard enough that her face flushes and she presses her hand against her mouth, holding in choked little sounds. “I’m sorry,” she says, waving John away when he awkwardly steps in to comfort her. “He’s just — I’m sorry.”

“Dear lord,” Sherlock says, glowering. John presses a dirty look in his direction. “She let me study cadavers for my work. I perceived she was attracted to me, but not on the level to warrant this kind of display.”

“He never looked at me twice,” Hooper is saying, “but he’s just so brilliant. He was so brilliant. I just, I can’t —”

John wants to say, “We don’t know it’s him,” but he can’t bear to lie to this woman, so instead he tries, “Did he come to Barts often?”

Hooper pulls a tissue off a nearby table and cleans her nose. She swallows and seems to regain her composure, such as it is. “He was here every week. I let him do things I shouldn’t.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Sherlock says. His voice cuts through the conversation, then stays, like dirt in a wound.

“I’m sorry,” John says, and means it. It’s terribly strange, exploring the husk of Sherlock’s life, meeting the people he left behind, considering that less than a week ago he’d never even heard the name Sherlock Holmes.

“No, I’m —” Hooper pulls another tissue. “Did you want to — finish your examination? Or read my notes?”

John shakes his head. He pulls off his gloves and crosses the room to drop them in the appropriate bin. “No. I just needed to talk to you, to be honest.”

“I would’ve told you if she was useful,” Sherlock breaks in.

“Oh,” Hooper says. “Well.”

“Thank you for your help.” He reaches to shake her hand, and then goes out to meet Inspector Lestrade, who is leaning on the unmarked sedan he presumably drove here. Sherlock vanishes on the way.

“Got what you wanted?” Lestrade asks.

“Yes,” John says. “Do you think it’s him?”

“Do you?”

John hesitates. “I don’t have all that much to go on.”

“Neither do we,” Lestrade says. “You’re aware, aren’t you, that you’ve officially been taken on as a consultant? That you have to report to me now?”

“I understand.”

Lestrade offers him a skeptical look. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says. He pulls open the car door, and slides into the driver’s seat. “Or at least don’t do anything I’m going to regret.”

**xx**

John picks up some fish and chips and a cappuccino, then heads over to the park. He settles himself on a nice secluded bench, lays out his food, and waits. He’s wiping the grease off his fingers when Sherlock finally pops into existence beside him, looking cross. “That was uncalled for,” he says.

“What? Talking to your girlfriend?”

“I didn’t have a girlfriend.”

“Boyfriend?”

Sherlock huffs and crosses his arms like a peevish child. “I consider myself married to my work. If you must know.”

“Must’ve been the only one’d take you.” John drops his crumpled napkin into the carryout box, and finishes off the dregs of his coffee. “So what was that about? Are we solving your murder now? Doesn’t seem like prodding at your dismembered feet’s the way to convince Mycroft I don’t know you’re dead.”

“Officially, you don’t know who it belongs to.”

“Officially.”

Sherlock doesn’t look at John, preferring instead to survey the park like a vulture watching a dying thing. “The next time you see my brother, you’ll tell him you’ve discovered my horrible secret.”

A jogger passes by. John waits to reply. “That you’re . . .” He waves his hand vaguely.

“Precisely.”

“And how’s he going to react?”

Sherlock rolls his head over his shoulder. His expression is still vulturous. “Badly.”

“Ah. And if he sees through it?”

“He’ll have sufficient evidence.”

“Right.” John folds his hands in his lap. It’s a nice sort of day. There are breezes and more air than smog, and if it’s cloudy, well, shit, it’s London. On a personal level, John isn’t a great deal of pain, either physical or psychic. If he has to contemplate his impending death-by-Mycroft, this is the day to do it. “What about Moriarty?”

“He’s not your problem.”

John takes a breath. “That. That was before I knew he _killed you,_ Sherlock, don’t think for a second —”

“No.” Sherlock’s intensity is startling. He blinks onto his feet, the sudden force of him halving John’s objection as easily as a butcher’s chopper. Despite himself John leans back, digging his spine into the slats of the bench. “You’re not going anywhere near him.”

John manages to speak. “You have to let me help you.”

“He. Will. Kill. You,” Sherlock says.

A spark of anger jumps in John’s chest. He stands up himself, brushing through space Sherlock only technically doesn’t occupy in the process. “You’ll let me hang around your brother all day long, the man you said was the most dangerous —”

“The most dangerous man you’ll _ever meet_. You’re never going to meet Moriarty.”

“Fuck that,” John says. “You act like I’m afraid of dying.”

Sherlock smiles viciously, mockingly. “Oh, why not? Because you look at all of us and assume you have the remotest idea —”

“ _I’m a soldier_ ,” John says. “You’re right when you say I don’t know what it’s like to die, but it can’t be all that much worse than what I’ve already lived through.”

“So you never want to —”

“I want to help you. I want to get that scumbag off the streets. I want —”

“I’m sorry,” says a voice. “Am I interrupting something?” John and Sherlock both whirl around. 

It’s Mycroft.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to apologize for this taking... um, eight months, apparently. A combination of a major real life transition and this chapter fighting me every step of the way kind of killed it for a while, but at least I've finished it now, and I'm satisfied with the result. Hope you enjoy.

John never used to be scared of anything. As a child, there were no monsters in his closet, and he befriended his neighbors’ enormous, slavering mastiff before even their own children would go near it. In school, when anyone who took a disliking to him was bound to be twice his size, he could never quite work up the emotional energy needed to be intimidated. He could never wrap his mind around the concept of reality, and didn’t pay much mind to fantasy, either. Harry and their dad felt everything — felt it too much — while John barely noticed broken bones.

Then he got on the wrong side of that sociopathic little shit at university, and everything changed. Something about getting the piss beat out of him with a baseball bat cracked more than ribs. He went from clever but listless to _burning_ overnight. For the first time in his life, sensation had broken through to him. Realization, in a literal sense.

So he got himself through physical therapy, then medical school, then army training. After a certain point he came to the conclusion that he could handle anything life threw at him, no questions asked.

Mycroft Holmes isn’t “anything,” and neither is Sherlock. Now John realizes this. He feels nineteen again, skin-to-skin with the world for the first time.

“Mycroft,” he starts, ready to say something stupid.

“Shut up.” John does so, despite himself. Mycroft’s mouth twists. His eyes are angry. Very angry. “My brother has a saying. Had a saying.” Words queue up behind John’s teeth, but he doesn’t dare release them. “He said, ‘When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ I’ve found this axiom useful of late. It’s impossible that Sherlock is alive.”

“John.” Sherlock is calm but urgent. John doesn’t let him draw his eyes. “Tell him everything. Do what he wants, whatever he wants, and remember that he won’t kill you. You’re his only link to me.”

“Someone is speaking to you now,” Mycroft observes, and who the hell knows how he can tell, how he took a misplaced comment and turned it into this. “Who?” John’s expression is enough. Mycroft chest rises in an abbreviated inhalation. “What’s he saying?”

“Tell him he’s not going to get a word out of me if he hurts you.”

John’s eyes snap to Sherlock’s face. “He’s not going to believe that.”

“Believe what?” asks Mycroft. His tone is almost mild.

“He says — oh, for god’s sake. He says he won’t talk to you if you, ah. Hurt me.”

Mycroft looks him over. “I see.” He fishes in the inner pocket of his jacket for something, and John tenses. When his hand emerges, he holds between his thumb and forefinger an orange prescription-style bottle, at the bottom of which sits a small round pill. The hand falls to his side. “My brother is dead,” he says, “and you concealed that fact from me. I believe there need to be consequences for that. But if you do as I say, exactly as I say it, I won’t hurt you. Is that understood?”

John glances at Sherlock, who, in lieu of some kind of protest, only nods.

He, John, could kill Mycroft. He wants to kill Mycroft, with the sort of intensity he thinks his sister probably craves the bottle. He could do it so fast, so easily — all it would take is the decision to do so. But against all reason, John wants to live, and he knows that killing Mycroft would be the same as killing himself. So he puts his life in Sherlock’s hands, immaterial though they are. He holds out his open palm. “Yes.”

Mycroft holds out the bottle, drops it. John’s fingers close tight around it.

“Swallow that. Then you’re going to get into the car I have waiting for you. When you wake up, we will talk, at length. You will relay to me anything my brother has to say. If at any time either of you violate the terms of our agreement, so will I.”

John twists open the bottle. “All right then.” He throws his eyes sidelong at Sherlock, hoping for a last minute reprieve, for a palatable alternative to this madness. There isn’t one. He tosses the sedative to the back of his throat and swallows it.

He dreams of Afghanistan.

**xx**

He wakes up hunched over a metal table in a badly lit concrete room, which in no way surprises him. His head hurts, and his bad shoulder, and his neck, and the table is wet beneath a drool-crusted cheek. Fear lances through him and he clamps down on it as best he can. He swallows, and, after a few minutes of considering his various aches and pains, sits up straight and rubs the saliva off his face with the edge of his sleeve.

Yes, all right, he thinks. This was terribly scary in the anticipation, but he can deal with it. He will deal with it. He trusts Sherlock — okay, he doesn’t, but he thinks he knows him well enough to at least predict his behavior with some accuracy. He’s not alone in here. Just keep calm.

He stretches out, and rubs his bad shoulder with stiff, achy fingers. It’s easy to focus on that instead of the heavy dread weighing down his stomach. Just keep moving forward, he tells himself, just take it a step at a time. He breathes and surveys his surroundings.

A glass of water and a peanut butter sandwich on a tray sit just within army’s reach. It could be drugged, of course, but they had him unconscious for who knows how long. A needle would’ve been simpler.

Oh, hell. He fingers his major veins and tries to determine if he feels oddly. When he decides he doesn’t, at least not outside the boundaries of what he would expect for what he already knows is in his system, he pushes himself to his feet and goes to inspect the room. A once-over reveals no cameras, no one-way mirrors, not so much as a peephole in the heavy steel door blocking his exit. Still, best to assume he’s being monitored. He returns to the table and considers the water.

It has no unusual smell, and when he holds it up to the light and swirls it around he sees nothing to indicate anything has been dissolved in it. He weighs his options. After a few minutes, he takes a mouthful to try and wash away the cottony feeling in his mouth, then another, and before too long the water is gone.

He ignores the sandwich. He thinks he’d just throw it up.

He takes back his seat, and his mind wanders. Something could’ve been done to avoid this. Somewhere along the line, if he’d just . . . “Sherlock,” he says quietly. It’s too much to hope that he’ll come when John calls, but — there he is. Sherlock materializes in the opposite chair, and John could collapse from relief. “Am I being watched?” he asks.

“No,” Sherlock says. John lifts his eyebrows. “Mycroft doesn’t want anyone else involved in this. Not yet. We’re in an abandoned warehouse in Kent, off the grid. Very low-tech. And good thing, too.”

“Do you know what he’s planning?”

“He isn’t, not beyond the short-term. I underestimated the effect news of my death would have on him.”

“But he won’t just let me go.”

Sherlock looks down at his hands, which are intertwined in his lap. “I’m sorry, John.”

John closes his eyes, tilts his head back. He used to just be a person, he thinks. Years and years ago. “What are we doing, then?”

“I believe you would benefit from a flexible approach. Tell him what he wants to know. Take whatever opportunities come up. He already knows he needs you, if he wants to find my killer.”

“Right.”

A beat. “I’ve convinced you to make some highly irrational decisions.”

John rubs his neck. His eyes are pulsing and he wants to vomit and Sherlock Holmes wants to talk about their feelings. “Convinced me nothing. It was this or off myself.” He pulls a hand over his face and digs his fingers into his temples, trying to coax the headache out, trying not to think about how sincerely he means that. “I’d rather go out this way, tell you the truth.”

Sherlock frowns and says nothing for a while. “I can’t kill Moriarty. There are more than a few loopholes in death, but I still can’t physically —”

“I offered.” John looks up. “Might have to take a rain check, though.”

“I don’t . . .” Sherlock’s expression pinches, and he looks away. “It may be you’ll have the opportunity.”

“Good.”

“It’ll be dangerous.”

“Not too long ago, you used that as a sales pitch.”

Sherlock looks back at him, moving his eyes without righting his head. “John. There’s a reason —”

The heavy steel door groans open. Behind it is Mycroft, of course, carrying with him a draft of musty air, his umbrella, and a file folder. John’s lizard brain implores him to bolt, but before he can consider obliging it, the door closes.

Mycroft takes Sherlock’s seat. Sherlock reappears at the head of the table, the troubled expression from a moment ago still etched on his face. “Sleep well?”

“Think I knocked back a few too many,” John says. Mycroft smiles congenially.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He puts the folder on the table and slides it across. “Perhaps you’re acquainted with Robert Breen?”

“Who —” John stops. He opens the folder, and sure enough, the printout inside reads, _This is Chelsea. I know I’ve died_ . . .

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Sherlock leans over the table. “Really, John.”

John doesn’t look at him, doesn’t acknowledge him in any way. He swallows. “I was, ah. I was told anyone who read this would forget about it immediately.”

“Well, Mr. Breen did seem mystified when we asked about it. And he found it quite impossible to follow our conversation for longer than a sentence, so it would seem you were half right.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

“It’s documentation — however circumstantial — of a man who can speak to the spirits of the dead. There are any number of people who would find it very interesting, I should think.” Mycroft watches him, almost languorous. He’s calmed down since the park, gotten back into form. “Of those very few people who have seen this, you and I are the only ones who remember it, or understand its significance. If you flip through that packet, you will find notes from a Dr. Ella Thompson describing your tendency to react to voices only you can hear, as well as extensive transcripts of text messages and e-mails from various unknown parties, all sent to you, Doctor, all asking for a rather unusual variety of help. I’m sure you can appreciate the common thread.

“It’s possible, as you say, that some supernatural force has been protecting you anonymity up to this point, but I assure you my eyes are open now. If need be, I will use every ounce of my influence, such as it is, to ensure that all of the wrong people are similarly illuminated.”

John sets his face. “I understand.” Sherlock has been very quiet since Mycroft arrived. It’s not reassuring.

“So, since my brother is here — at the end of the table to my right, I believe — would you like to begin?”

John takes this as a sign that he’s free to glance back to where Sherlock stands, watching the proceedings with cold intensity. His eyes flit to John’s for just a moment, and John takes that as all the comfort he’s going to get. “I s’pose so,” he says, and does as he’s told.

**xx**

Sherlock talks and John gives him a voice, but that voice is not, and never can be, a fitting prosthetic for Sherlock’s own. This story is his testimony, the summation of the most important murder he’ll ever solve, and someone should hear him give it. But there’s just John.

Mycroft is disinterested in otherworldly minutia, so once John gives him enough for context’s sake they move on to the critical item: Jim Moriarty.

The story is long and convoluted and chases seemingly irrelevant tangents that always loop back to the same central theme. Sherlock details murders, kidnappings, thefts, and jailbreaks, a whole spectrum of crimes that seemed impossible and turned out only to be exceedingly, ingeniously improbable. He reveled in them. But they kept cropping up, again and again. Eventually it occurred to him that there couldn’t possibly be that many criminal masterminds running around London.

So he thought, what if there’s only one?

It was the most fascinating problem he’d ever been faced with. So he dug, and he dug, and when he hit New Zealand he got a bullet in the forehead.

“There’s a war on, and no one’s noticed,” Sherlock says. John follows, just a word behind, as he’s done for several hours now. His throat is dry and his head is pounding but there’s nothing to be done for it. He’s locked in a room with a couple of sociopaths, one of whom is a fucking ghost. He’s not going to ask for an aspirin.

“Of course we have,” Mycroft says, leaving the pronoun ambiguous. “The situation was being handled.”

Sherlock scoffs. John has no decent way of relaying this, so he doesn’t. “Then you’ve done a pitiful job of it. You might have killed me yourself, for all the good you’ve done.”

John pulls up short at “you might.” It’s an astonishingly vicious thing to say, at least for any mouth but Sherlock’s and any ear but Mycroft’s. Mycroft might even deserve it, but John doesn’t know if he can surmount the thousand ingrained social impulses barring him from repeating it.

“Is something wrong?” There’s a fleck of worry in Mycroft’s voice, like a patch of chipped paint on an expensive vase. John looks at him and thinks and thinks, what could he have done to stop this? All that power, all those resources, and he hasn’t done anything more productive than point a few guns at John’s head. 

John says it. Sherlock shoots him a look down the length of the table.

Mycroft’s jaw stiffens. For a moment, he’s silent. Then he asks, “How did it happen? Specifically. Give me data, Sherlock.”

Sherlock looks almost taken aback. “He was . . . impressed with me. He wanted to play. All I had to do was see. To notice the game he was laying out for me, and be interesting enough to take it up.”

Mycroft nods, like that made any kind of sense. “What happened when you found him?”

An odd expression crosses Sherlock’s face. He hesitates. “He found me,” he admits. “I believe I disappointed him.”

Jesus Christ. John stares. He’d thought Sherlock had been killed to cover up a crime or plural, not because he failed to live up to some psychopath’s standard of cool. For a fleeting moment, he thinks that this is not how the world works, that people don’t behave like that, but his bland little predefined reality didn’t survive contact with the brothers Holmes. Although it’s been a long day, anger wells up in John’s chest.

As apparently it does in Mycroft’s, because —

“What do you mean you ‘disappointed him’?” he yells, climbing to his feet. The edges of his words hit with a snap like that of a gavel. His eyes jump to Sherlock’s empty air, and he slams his hands against the table. Sherlock jerks back. John finds himself locked in place. “What in god’s name were you doing? What _are_ you doing? I thought with Trevor, with the cocaine, that I’d seen you at your most pathetic, but this is inexcusable. Oh, you thought you’d play a game with Moriarty? Maybe you thought you’d found a kindred spirit. Dear god, Sherlock, you’re a child.”

Silence reigns for a full minute before, slowly, Mycroft lowers himself back into his chair. He closes his eyes and sits still as the struggle plays itself out on his face. Sherlock fades out of existence for a few seconds before returning, openly surprised. John feels trapped, awkward, as one always does when confronted by the deeper emotions of strangers.

“You’re a child,” Mycroft repeats, quietly. He opens his eyes, pauses to inhale. “Moriarty will be dismantled.”

Whether he means the person or the organization is unclear. Except it really isn’t.

**xx**

For the moment, both Holmeses have left him alone, giving him a precious opportunity to get his thoughts in order. On top of that, he’s managed to get his hands on a liter bottle of water and some paracetamol tablets. Within fifteen minutes he feels much closer to functional.

What he needs, what he absolutely cannot do without, is agency. His position is indefensible; he knows that. He has no resources — not his gun, not so much as a mobile phone. Although he might yet be able to retrieve those things in the future, for the time being his only advantage is Sherlock, and he needs something of his own.

He pushes the heels of his hands against his eyes and watches the colors that spark in the black. With all his might he tries to catch a thought and pin it up so that he might get a better look at it.

His only advantage is Sherlock.

Oh. _Oh._

**xx**

Sherlock is still gone when Mycroft comes back. “He’s not here,” John says.

“No.” Mycroft doesn’t sit. “Do you know where he is?”

John shakes his head. “He doesn’t tell me a lot, just so you know.” A guess would have it that he’s off spying on Moriarty. But that would hardly be news to Mycroft. “So what’s my part in all this?”

That’s only a step away from “What are you going to do to me,” but it won’t do any good to think like that. He gives Mycroft an even look, and waits.

“Moriarty is a difficult man to find. Ordinarily we keep tabs on . . . people like him. Within the last twelve hours or so, however, he’s disappeared.”

John crosses his arms, leans back. “And you think Sherlock can find him? With his mysterious paranormal powers, or what have you?”

“He’s Sherlock Holmes. Paranormal has nothing to do with it.”

Fair point. “So . . .”

Mycroft regards him. After a few seconds of this, he slides back into his seat. “You don’t seem like much,” he observes.

“Thank you,” John says mildly.

“I have at my disposal a team of highly trained professional killers, all armed with the best weapons money can buy. It is inconceivable to me that, if I put them to task, they will not do everything I ask of them. Do you have any idea why I might hesitate to use them?”

John feels his heart speed up. “I might.”

Mycroft leans back, crooks his elbow against the table, and supports his cheek on a few fingers. “If you can do something for me,” he says, “I will consider us to be even.”

John keeps his face as neutral as possible. “What do you need me to do?”

Mycroft takes a breath. “I will send you — and Sherlock, of course, if he decides to accompany you — in with my team. They will do their jobs, but I want you to be the one to pull the trigger. You see, I don’t merely want Moriarty dead. I require that my brother be avenged. A stranger cannot do that.”

It’s too good to be true. “Then why don’t you bring him in alive? Surely there’s more you could do to him than me.”

“I’m not an idiot,” says Mycroft. “Every moment that man is alive, he remains dangerous.” He pauses. The look he gives John is cold, and angry, and powerful. “I wouldn’t, however, mind if he were to have a few moments longer than strictly necessary.”

John’s innermost self shakes with gratification. No, with _gratitude_. “I understand.”

Mycroft nods. Breathes again. “I’m sorry,” he says, not to John.

John tilts his head up, and lets his eyes wander over the ceiling. “I’m in,” he says.

For a second Mycroft seems pleased. The emotion is banished, however, and replaced not with stolidity but with sadness. “As I expected, Doctor,” he says. “Thank you.”

**xx**

The heavy door swings open an hour later, turning John’s five by five meter room into little more than a pimple on the skin of a cavernous, dirty old warehouse. The air is stale but less so than in the interrogation room, and it is comforting to be confronted with such relatively open space. Sherlock is leaning on John’s side of the wall with an indecipherable expression, while Mycroft is nowhere to be seen. The person directly in front of him is a woman, beautiful and distant, with a familiar voice.

She holds out one manicured hand without looking up from the smartphone enmeshed in the other. “I’m Basileia.” She introduces herself with a sort of distracted intensity, a peek at the energy she’s expending on whatever else it is she’s doing. Her handshake is strong and her finger bones are sharp. John’s memory drags something up, and he realizes he first met her as Anthea, ages ago. She doesn’t seem to remember him at all. “Mr. Holmes has asked me to take you home.”

John blinks. “Home?”

She gives him a soapy little smile and a moment of eye contact, then gestures with the turn of her body for him to follow her. Sherlock pops up beside John, and falls into stride with him. The concrete floor is dirty enough that John leaves footprints in the grit. It’s disconcerting to notice that Sherlock doesn’t. He casts a shadow and his footsteps echo through the warehouse, but apparently a physical impression would be too much, even if only John could see it.

They take several steps before Sherlock speaks. “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

With “Basileia” walking just a few paces ahead of them, John can’t reply. He lifts his eyebrows.

Sherlock tilts his chin skyward and relaxes his jaw. “When I . . . contacted you. I wasn’t just looking to solve murders. I was looking to draw his attention.”

John can’t quite stop himself. “What?”

Basileia pauses mid-step and glances over her shoulder. “Sir?”

John’s teeth work rigidly, and he forces his eyes back to the real person standing in front of him. “Nothing,” he says. “I just thought of something.”

She doesn’t even spare him a facial expression before resuming her walk as though nothing had happened. She leads him out of the warehouse and to a shiny black car identical to the one which brought him here.

In the gray sunlight — shit, the sun is rising, how long was he in there? — Sherlock’s already pale complexion is ashen. “I was hoping that he would think you were sufficiently interesting to draw him out in the open. Originally I planned to search out Moriarty’s work and have you solve it, after I established you sufficiently with cold cases. With any luck you would be able to get close to him, and then . . .”

Something tingles at the peak of John’s spine. He understands.

Sherlock didn’t hire a voice. He hired a gun.

The driver opens the door for him, and it takes him a moment to remember to get in. Basileia slides into the front seat, engrossed in her work, and pays him no visible mind.

There’s a screen of dark glass between the front and back seats. John deems the risk necessary, and, when Sherlock materializes in the seat next to his, whispers, “You wanted me to kill him. From the beginning.”

Sherlock is impassive. “Yes.”

“And when were you planning to tell me?”

“When it became relevant,” Sherlock says, which means never. “John. I’m saying he knows you exist. You need to be careful.”

John inhales deeply. He flexes his hands and counts to ten. He’s not sure if he’s angry, but he’s certain he ought to be. “Okay. Okay. How much does this matter?”

Sherlock tilts his head a fraction. “A bit.”

John grimaces. He slouches in his seat like a child, then straightens when his shoulder protests. “That’s what I was afraid of. All right. Whatever. Do you have any other potentially life-threatening information to impart, or may I go to sleep now?” It occurs to him that he’s allowed his voice to slip back into its normal register. He doesn’t bother to drop it back.

All he receives for his trouble is a prevaricating look. “Are you angry?”

“What do you think?” John asks, although he himself doesn’t really know. He swings his legs up onto the seat, thus displacing Sherlock, who must now perch awkwardly on the edge, halfway straddling the cup-holder. He has the decency to look uncomfortable, at least.

“I didn’t know you when I started this.”

John shuts his eyes. His head falls slightly to the side, and ends up cradled between the window and the back of the seat. “Just let me sleep.” Perhaps, if Sherlock hadn’t told him this, he might’ve mentioned Mycroft’s request, but now he can’t bring himself to. I didn’t know you either, he wants to say, or all you would’ve had to do was ask.

Oddly, Sherlock doesn’t leave, and doesn’t make a nuisance of himself, either. John drifts into a shallow, half-alert kind of sleep, and whenever his eyes slip open he’ll catch a glimpse of the man staring out the window, hanging onto one of the slingshot handles and leaning over John’s knees. This would be easy to dismiss as a dream but for the fact that he is still there when John jerks back to full consciousness an hour or so later.

John rights himself and decides not to ask. He thinks he might be touched.

The car rolls to a stop a reasonable distance from John’s flat. He pushes the door open and steps, stretching, out onto the pavement and the early morning sun. Sherlock disappears without a word. Basileia lowers her window and looks out at him. “I’ve been told to tell you to gather whatever you think you might need.” She glances back at her mobile and her eyes stick. “You have twenty minutes.”

The window returns to place without further ado. John rolls his shoulder, rubs a sore spot on his neck, and jogs up the steps and through the hallway until he finds his door. Once inside, he finds his pistol, straps a knife to his calf, and takes a heavy breath.

He took care of quite a lot back at the warehouse, but this is still a valuable opportunity to improve his position. There are how many dead people in London? How many sets of eyes and ears, all of them looking for help only he can give them? He doesn’t know.

But all he has to do is ask.

**xx**

John does not have to promise quite as many favors as he thought he would. Not for information on Jim Moriarty. He isn’t the only one with good reason to hate the man.

They can’t give him the substance of the man, of course. They can’t tell him that Moriarty isn’t a person in the traditional sense. John is correct in assuming he is a living breathing man; that he has a name and a face and a place in space/time. But he cannot grasp the base irregularity of the man’s character. Moriarty doesn’t sync with the world the way people do. He sees it too clearly, stands too far above it, has hands too quick for its normal rules to still. What’s wrong with him is more than sociopathy. It’s not about mental illness or neurological dysfunction. Most people, if they were able to articulate the sensation, would look at him and see a god trapped in a human body.

If that sounds overly dramatic, well. That’s the sort of man he is. His eyes don’t really fit in their sockets. His skin stretches around too full a skeleton. There’s too much of him for muscle and bones to hold.

These are not the sorts of things that trickle through the channels to which John has access. He learns that Moriarty is a scary figure, responsible for death and suffering on an unsettling scale. His appreciation for just what caliber of enemy he is going up against gains depth. But the overriding fact is that this is the man who killed Sherlock, and, because of this, John is once again like the eleven-year-old boy who didn’t even think to be afraid of ninety kilos of snarling guard dog. It never really occurs to him to do anything other than find Moriarty and shoot him dead.

He is so, so tired.

Recon, even with all the people doing it for him, is a complicated business. He wants the standard sort of information — what kind of manpower does Moriarty have? What sort of electronic defenses? Moreover, what are Mycroft’s people planning? He expects that he’ll get most of this information, either from Sherlock or Mycroft, but he doesn’t want to risk the lies of omission and strategic half-truths that have defined his encounters with them so far.

He wants multiple viewpoints. He wants honest eyes with no hidden plans or ulterior motives. So, ghosts.

He wants to _know_ things, things he will never get from the Holmeses. He wants to know the man’s he’s going to kill, and the world that he lives in.

All he has is information, and he will somehow make it enough. He doesn’t have maps or body armor or comrades he can rely on, but at the end of the day he can manage without them.

He’s made a decision.

That’s the key thing. If you want something done, you must give your whole soul to the doing of it. You die only when you forget, for even a second, what you decided and why you decided it.

He uses his twenty minutes in the best way he knows how. Then he walks calmly to the idling car, slides into the backseat, and clicks his seatbelt. Sherlock rejoins him ten minutes into the drive — perhaps he knows what John’s up to, and actually wanted to give him the space to do it. Who knows.

John is aware his loyalty is irrational. Sherlock has done nothing to earn it. In the past twenty-four hours alone this man has gotten him kidnapped by the British government and informed him, several months too late, that they only met so he could be used as bait for a madman.

But John knows that this is it. This is the reason he survived Afghanistan. This is purpose. This is the bulwark against chaos, and the only kind of order he really understands.

So he closes his eyes, and waits for it.

**xx**

He almost feels guilty for heaping himself upon Mycroft’s team of, per description, highly trained professional killers. If someone asked him to take an unknown civilian into the middle of a combat operation and then give him free reign to fuck everything up, he’d be less than thrilled, too. But orders are orders.

They are to find Moriarty, subdue him, and from there do anything John says and, within reason, do nothing to impede any action he might take — which is to say, they are neither killing their target immediately nor removing him to somewhere he can be properly restrained and separated from his resources. Men like these are well aware of the principle of not wounding that which you cannot kill. Tactically speaking, this isn’t the soundest call ever made.

Well, too bad.

Sherlock, by now, has realized that John is going in with Mycroft’s men. “Can you really be that stupid?” he’d asked. “You know he’s waiting for them, don’t you?”

John did.

“Then what could possess you — why would Mycroft allow —” Sherlock had stopped midsentence as darkness fell over his face. “For god’s sake, John.”

“This is what you wanted,” John reminded him, and that put an end to the conversation.

Now, as John sits through a briefing his ghosts didn’t quite make redundant, he does his best to keep his eyes off Sherlock, who is pacing strobe-like across one wall of the conference room. It’s odd for him to stick around this long when he has nothing to say and nothing to do. John doesn’t think he’s flattering himself to think that Sherlock is worried.

He is given time to examine the layout of the five-bedroom Hampstead monstrosity Moriarty is apparently using as a hideout. John would not expect a crime lord of such stature to stood to moldy basements and lightless backrooms, but if he were really that keen on hiding, he would’ve picked a subtler place, surely.

When the meeting is done, there’s a mess about John’s gear. He doesn’t exactly fit in among Mycroft’s immaculate private army, and should he perhaps avoid drawing attention to himself? Seeing the reason in this, John consents to a shower and a change of outfit. He’s hardly going to object to body armor.

Sherlock comments snidely on this or that, disappearing for brief intervals but generally maintaining his eerie constancy.

Then John’s being loaded into a nondescript white van alongside a cohort of tall, menacing men, all armed and armored and, although they were quite varied a moment ago, have become nearly identical under their helmets and visors. It would all be surreal if he hadn’t crossed that bridge a long time ago. As they approach Hampstead, dread settles around him like a curse.

The men do as they’re supposed to. They are well-prepared for snipers and bombs and gunmen. John is prepared for snipers and bombs and gunmen. He has no intell to suggest he need prepare for anything else. And yet, and yet.

Five minutes after they arrive at Moriarty’s, John is still alive. He’s the only one.

**xx**

They reach the house at approximately eleven at night. John has had time to sleep and eat and restore himself as far as possible. He does not feel good about this, but he can’t imagine not doing it. He is to wait in the van with two other men, about a mile from the house, until such time as it is safe for him to enter. It’s not what he wants to be doing, but he can’t deny it is a reasonable concession to sanity if nothing else.

At 11:05, two things happen at once. One, they hear an explosion coming from the direction of the house, and all of their monitoring equipment goes dead. Two, the doors to the van burst open. Both of Mycroft’s men are shot in the head before they can respond. John manages to raise his pistol, but he doesn’t have time to fire it before three men climb up into the van with him, disarm him efficiently, and immobilize him. He struggles and kicks and plays at being a right bastard, but then he feels the stab of a needle in his neck and knows that they have him.

**xx**

“Wake up, John. Please. I can see you’re still breathing. You need to be awake. John.”

Sherlock’s voice outpaces the other less pleasant stimuli all racing to pierce the shell of John’s unconsciousness, but only by a fraction of a second. On its heels comes pain, which his brain can’t pin to any one part of his body, and a fleeting thought that something is very wrong. Then a warm hand collides with his face, breaking the levees and allowing reality to flood through him all at once. His eyes snap open.

He is in a dim room which smells of damp and cement dust. Two pale faces are staring down at him: Sherlock, kneeling beside him, and another, with eyes like Poe’s raven's, kneeling over him. John is slumped in the right angle between a rough concrete wall and a rougher floor. His arms are wrenched behind his back, held in place by handcuffs, and his ankles are bound together with a nylon cable tie. His shoulders, particularly his bad one, ache horrifically. His skull feels like a piece of drywall standing between a sledgehammer and its one true love. He can feel the miasma of drugs in his system.

His neck is stiff when he twists it to avoid vomiting all over himself. Then he swallows whatever miserable moisture is left in his mouth. “Moriarty,” he says hoarsely.

“Johnny. I expected you for dinner. I was beginning to worry you’d stand me up.” There’s an Irish inflection in his voice, which he warps and stretches around words at syntactic intervals. The tone is amiable; the timbre is anything but. “Now you can worry for a while. I think that’s fair, don’t you?” He pats John’s cheek, the same one he slapped, and stands up, straightening his suit. It’s of the same fine quality as Sherlock’s.

“Where am I?” John asks. Not really for Moriarty’s benefit. He squirms into a more comfortable, slightly more defensible position.

“That would be telling,” says Moriarty, at the same time as Sherlock pipes up with, “Soundproof basement,” and then gives John as precise a location as he can manage in the length of a human breath. They’re still in London, at least, but quite a ways from the house in Hampstead. They’re beneath another house, this one in a less reputable neighborhood.

John lets a brief prayer, or something like one, slide into and through his mind. He says they wouldn’t happen to be _here_ , would they, and watches Moriarty’s face twist into a strobe flash of surprise before righting itself. John can’t spare him a glance, but out of the corner of his eye he sees Sherlock pull away, almost stricken.

“What are you doing?” he hisses, and John ignores him.

Moriarty has superior equanimity. Standing up, he holds himself in the malicious, arrogant way of some too-clever, too-privileged teenagers. “Johnny. I’m impressed.”

“Yeah, well, you should be. I’m going to kill you.”

The words are out before he has the slightest chance to censor them. He realizes that while he was busy dealing with pain and fear and a general sense that he was going to die horribly, his subconscious had been chewing on the meatier fact that _this is the bastard who killed Sherlock_.

Sherlock flickers into John’s safe range of vision. He is staring at him with an impossible, unreadable expression. He has no idea what to do, that much is clear. John watches him in the edges of his sight and then feels the knowledge hit him right between the eyes: Sherlock is standing within a foot of the man who murdered him, but is looking only at John, and has been this whole time.

Oh, god.

“I’m going to kill you,” John repeats.

Moriarty looks down on him in every sense of the word. “I could rip your lungs out,” he says, giving due time to each word. His lip curls a bit. “I probably will, actually.”

“Then I’ll have to be fast, won’t I.”

Moriarty kicks him swiftly in the ribs, and John can’t stop himself from crying out. A few more kicks and Moriarty seems satisfied with the situation. “You’re not that good, Johnny-boy. I do want to know, though, how someone as truly unspectacular as you ended up playing errand boy for Mycroft Holmes. It’s something of a problem for me.”

John pulls his elbows in gently around his ribs, allowing himself the comfort of his own body heat. He looks up at Moriarty and imagines in vivid detail carving the man’s kidneys out of his abdomen and forcing them down his trachea. “Well,” he says, without really knowing where the words are coming from, “turns out you killed his brother. When he found out what I know about you, he thought I might be able to help him out.”

Sherlock watches him, wide-eyed. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but this isn’t — John, you shouldn’t —”

Moriarty presses his hands into the wall, and leans into John’s space. “And what could _you_ know about me that he doesn’t?” he asks. “No. No. You’re making things up, Johnny, and Daddy’s not in the mood for make believe. Tell me the truth, now.” He slides down a bit, so that his face is mere inches from John’s.

John’s head throbs, but he holds eye contact. He feels the swell of power through his body, the rise of that familiar feeling which makes some men and women completely unkillable, and gives them their power to kill. “I know about Carl Powers,” he says, and Sherlock goes white, but that’s nothing, nothing that could hurt a man like Moriarty. John feels it; he knows what to say, how to say it. “But more importantly I know what you see when you look at me. You see pieces that don’t fit. You probably know every single detail of every single record ever filed away on me. But something doesn’t make sense. You know who I am, but you don’t know _what_.” Some powerful gravity is drawing the words from his mouth. He can't stop them.

“John,” says Sherlock.

“And what are you?” Moriarty asks. The look in his eyes is rapt, bright like the sudden glare of sunlight on glass, bright enough to cause pain. For the first time in this whole conversation, his attention is wholly fixed on one point, and that point is John.

John lunges.

His body works around the lingering drug in his blood, his bruised ribs, his old injuries, to move just fast enough to tackle Moriarty to the ground. He doesn’t have his arms, or free use of his legs, but he has a hard skull, which he slams against Moriarty’s eye socket with all the force he can muster. His vision splotches and the nerves in his head screech at him, but it’s worth it to see the dazed look on Moriarty’s face.

He presses his whole weight into Moriarty’s chest. What happens next is fast and violent and neither clean nor admirable. It involves blood and teeth and John having to live with the memory of having done it.

But Moriarty is dead.

John falls off the body, onto his own knees, the closest he can come to standing. He spits blood not his own onto the gritty concrete. “How long do we have?” he asks Sherlock.

Sherlock stares. John feels raw, exposed — and fulfilled. He knows that this has been waiting for him since they first handed him a gun all those years ago.

Sherlock is not repulsed. He is shocked, but not horrified. He flickers but does not leave.

John loves him.

“I think —” Sherlock starts, and is cut off by the bang of the door against the wall. Soon there are six guns pointed directly at his head. John looks up at them and they don’t matter, not one bit.

But they don’t shoot. “Fuck. _Fuck_ ,” one of the six says. John knows how this looks. He takes the moment to examine them and he realizes that they are, somehow, Mycroft’s men. Just a moment too late.

John feels reality settle through him like a cold front. For the second time in fifteen minutes, he vomits.

**xx**

Mycroft explains how they found him. It involves maths and clever usage of CCTV and John doesn’t particularly care. Then he’s allowed to get himself cleaned up, and Mycroft checks him into an ultra-private and highly secure medical center. John isn’t badly injured, but he is grateful for the quiet and the complete separation from his normal life.

Sherlock sits with him. John talks to him without worrying about how it looks.

“Moriarty still has very dangerous contacts left alive,” Sherlock says. “Among them a sniper named Sebastian Moran. But I believe Mycroft will take care of them. He’s already dealt with Lestrade. The police have been made aware of my death.”

“Good,” John says. “Is that why he has me locked in here, or should I be worried?” He knows well enough that he couldn’t leave if he wanted to; he doesn’t want to. Not yet.

“I think he’s primarily worried for your safety, yes. But I’m not a mind reader. I can’t rule out the threat of future coercion.”

John leans back into his pillow and stares at the ceiling. Every meal he’s eaten since he killed Moriarty has tasted like blood. He doesn’t regret what he did, exactly — really he feels an almost righteous gratification over it — but that doesn’t mean it can’t hurt him. 

He doesn’t care what Mycroft wants out of him. There’s nothing left to threaten him with.

“I should think he’d be grateful,” he says.

Sherlock snorts. “Then you clearly don’t know him. But his behavior has been somewhat anomalous of late.”

The quiet hangs over them for a moment. “I’m sorry,” John says. “For everything.”

Sherlock clearly doesn’t know what to do with that, but after a beat he nods tightly. “So am I.”

**xx**

It takes a month before John can leave. He is allowed to ring Harry — he tells her he checked into a psychiatric hospital, and she believes him — and would probably be allowed other phone calls if he had anyone else to contact. Mycroft visits several times, mostly to talk with Sherlock. After a week John asks just how long he’s going to be staying, and Mycroft simply raises an eyebrow and asks what John thinks _he_ has to do with that.

Then John asks how the hunt for Sebastian Moran is going, and Mycroft says, “Very well, thank you,” and John decides not to worry.

Sherlock is usually around, although less frequently as time wears on. John doesn’t worry about that, either.

Out of the blue a nurse asks him if he’s pleased to be leaving tomorrow, and when he wakes up the next morning his bags are packed and they shoo him out without even the pretense of paperwork.

Then John is standing on the sidewalk, alone and surrounded by his city, and a few cold drops of rain hit him at random intervals. He hails a cab and goes home.

**xx**

He feels it coming. He doesn’t let himself think about it ahead of time, because it would unravel him, but all the subtle nerves in his gut and around his heart whisper at him regardless. A few days after he gets home, not long before dawn, the mobile phone on his bedside table chimes at him and he _knows_.

_Roof. Barts. Now. SH._

John stares for just a second, then grabs his keys and flat-out runs. He doesn’t change out of his sleep clothes, doesn’t worry about cold or heat or cab fare, he just runs.

By the time he makes it to the roof — by hook or by crook — he is panting and miserable and Sherlock is just standing there, waiting for him.

“You seem to have understood,” he says.

“You’re leaving.” John steps closer. Sherlock doesn’t move away. “You — you finished.”

Sherlock nods fractionally.

John closes the space between them, until they’re standing within speaking distance. He looks at Sherlock, really looks at him. He watches the way the light hits his skin and pulls a shadow out behind him. He studies the small variations in color of his eyes, and examines the weave of his coat and the thin layer of fuzz on his scarf. Everything about Sherlock is real, so terrifyingly real, as though whatever force that allows his continued existence is as much a perfectionist as the man himself. He has scars and pores and the beginnings of lines on his forehead. “I don’t want you to go,” John says.

Sherlock frowns. The movement creates a seam in his brow, and the seam casts a shadow within itself. “I know.”

“I know you need to. I know. But I just _can’t_ , Sherlock, I can’t.” John lets the words hang for a minute. He wants the words to have enough edges to snag somewhere in Sherlock’s brain, to catch him and keep him here. When they don’t, he builds himself up and goes on. This is my last chance, he tells himself. My only chance. “Ever since I came home, there’s been something missing. In me. I thought it was the things I’ve seen or I thought — I thought maybe I should’ve died. In Afghanistan, or in hospital, or in a bloody bus crash, I don’t know. But it was you. I miss you, Sherlock. All the time.”

“I’ve been here,” Sherlock says. He’s such a brilliant liar.

“No. No, you’re dead. You’re dead, and you shouldn’t be. You should be alive and I don’t know how we would’ve been, if we’d’ve been friends, or — or if we would’ve met at all, but you should have been here.” His voice breaks on the last syllable, cracks open and spills more than he wants it to. So he grits his teeth, stands stock still, and composes himself at the cost of saying anything more.

Sherlock opens his mouth, then closes it. There’s real kindness in his eyes when he says, “I don’t believe in destiny, John. But I wish we could’ve.” He pauses. “I miss you too, you know.” Then he turns around to face the eastern horizon, where the early light is shining through the buildings like the first hints of crow’s feet at the eyes of an aging man. He moves to the edge. “I’m supposed to do this bit alone,” he says. “People are supposed to die alone.”

“No.” John comes up beside him. “I’m not leaving.” The words come out strangled, but he can’t cry yet. “Sherlock?”

“Mm?” Distracted. Not by the sunrise.

“All right?”

Sherlock shakes his head as though to clear it and meets John’s eyes. Nearly all the old focus is gone out of his own, and he looks faintly troubled. “John,” he says. “Thank you. But I need to be alone.”

John swallows. He wants to hug him, or shake him, or pull him off the ledge, but that’s not going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. So he crosses his arms against his own chest and looks away. “It’s been — you’ve been my friend. My best friend.”

Sherlock pulls his coat tighter around himself. He takes a long breath. “Is this what it’s like?”

“What?”

“Being human.” He turns back to the sky. John has no answer for him.

He waits for a moment more before nodding stoutly and going. He glances back, once, to watch him waiting there, keeping vigil over the dying of the night.

It’s the last time they’re together for a very long time.

**xx xx**

For a while John’s hand trembles and his leg aches and his dreams are torn apart, brutal cacophonies. Every day he’s surprised how much work it takes to live without Sherlock. How much he can mourn a man he never really met.

He goes about honoring the favors he owes. In increments, he banks away the money Sherlock gave him, converts it into something fit for an honest man. Some part of his mind conjures the phrase “getting his affairs in order,” and he considers whether he’s getting ready to die. Much to his astonishment, he doesn’t like the idea at all.

When he realizes that — when he knows for a fact that the end is not imminent, and life is going to go on — he grits his teeth and gets the hell on with it.

He gets a new flat. A new job. A girlfriend, too — Mary, who is six inches taller than John and teaches Russian at his alma mater. He loves her in a peaceful way. She believes him when he tells her about the ghosts, really believes him, and she doesn’t mind it when he rages his way out of a nightmare. She doesn’t hold it against him that he’s not quite sane.

They never get married. The discussion turns in that direction a few times, when they realize just how many years they’ve been living together, but it never quite coalesces. It comes down to the fact that their relationship isn’t about tax returns or children or promises. There’s a friendly face at the table in the morning and an extra pair of arms to carry the weight of their lives, and that’s enough. Both of them have would’ve-rathers and missing pieces. But they’re okay. They don’t need to be more than they are.

Occasionally he helps people pass on, often enough that he doesn’t have to feel guilty. When Mary’s sister dies he gives them a chance to talk one last time, and after that Mary does what she can to assist him.

When she dies, he hauls himself up into her hospital bed, cradles her body, and cries. She doesn’t come back for him. He wouldn’t want her to.

When he dies, he leaves nothing to come back for but a pile of old bones and clogged arteries, and yet he comes back anyway. Although he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter, he still thinks of it as an indulgence. Such a stupid thing. But after all this time, he wants to know.

The park where he used to walk is still there. It’s not the same, but it doesn’t need to be. He takes a deep breath which doesn’t really catch in his lungs, and raises his face to the moon. It doesn’t feel good to be here. When he moves, the world seems to slip away from him, like water between loose fingers. Everything looks so far away.

He settles down on a park bench. Looks down at his hands, then out at the empty shadows. This is what he came for.

Something is coming closer. It smells of blood and Mary’s shampoo and wool coats.

This is what he’s wanted, for so very many years. This is what he’s waited for. He’s a little bit afraid, because he doesn’t know for sure what’s going to happen when it hits him. But he clutches the fear close and savors it. It is good, and human, and final.

What comes after is not for you.


End file.
